Other forms: sizzling, sizzles, sizzled
To sizzle is to make that sharp hissing, crackling sound of food hitting hot fat. Bacon in the pan, onions going into oil, a steak the second it touches the grill.
There is a noun too — the sizzle of the pan — for the sound itself. Heat borrows the word: a sizzling afternoon, pavements that sizzle in July. People borrow it again for excitement, so a sizzling performance is thrilling and a sizzling romance is passionate. It belongs to wet heat and fat; dry things crackle or crunch instead. And the word is imitative, so say it aloud and you have made roughly the noise.
1verbsizzleTo make the hissing, crackling sound of food cooking in hot fat.
“The onions sizzled the moment they hit the pan.”
Patternsizzle in the pan · bacon / sausages sizzle · a sizzling + noun · sizzle (noun)
2nounfryingThe hissing sound of frying food.
“You could hear the sizzle from the other room.”
3verbextremelyTo be extremely hot.
“The road sizzled and the air above it shook.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
SIZZLE → the sss of meat in a hot pan
Say it and you hear it: sss-izzle, the hiss of cold meat hitting a hot pan.
Sizzle probably grew out of Middle English sissen, to hiss or buzz, with the -le ending English puts on small repeated actions — the one in crackle, sparkle and rustle. Under all of it the word is imitative. Somebody made it by copying the sound.
Middle English
sissen — to hiss; buzz; hum
English, today
sizzle
Probably a derivative of Middle English sissen (“to hiss; buzz; hum”), equivalent to siss + le; Ultimately imitative.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA