warm

UK/wɔːm/US/wɔɹm/

adjectiveA15 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #729 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: warming, warmer, warmest, warmed, warms

Warm is the good kind of hot — a little hot, never too much. A radiator you can rest your hands on, bath water that is exactly right, a jumper straight off the airer, a March afternoon in the sun.

Warm goes on the things that keep heat in as well as the things that give it out: a warm coat is not hot, it just stops the cold getting to you. It is a verb too — warm the plates, warm the milk, warm up the leftovers, warm up before a run. About people it means friendly and open: a warm welcome, a warm smile, a warm voice down the phone. Painters call red, orange and yellow warm colours, and blue and grey cool ones. And in a hiding game, warm means close to the answer: warmer, warmer, freezing.

Definitions of warm

1adjectivewarmA little hot, in a pleasant way.A1~43%
“The stones were still warm from the afternoon sun.”
- Said"Come in, it's warm by the stove. You look frozen."
- WrittenThe plates were warmer than the food, and the butter melted the moment it touched them.
- UsedKeep the bread warm under a cloth until everyone is sitting down.
- ContrastWarm, not hot. Hot burns your tongue; warm is the bath you could stay in. hot →
- Not thisSoup straight from the pan is not warm; it scalds. Warm is what it becomes while you talk.
Patternwarm + noun (water, bread, day) · keep / stay warm · warm up · warmer than · warmth
2adjectivekeepingKeeping the cold out.A1~21%
“Take a warm coat; it drops below zero at night.”
3adjectiveaffectionateFriendly and kind.A2~2%
“She gave him a warm welcome at the door.”
synonyms: kindly, affectionate
4adjectivecolourOf a colour: containing red, orange or yellow.B1~2%
“The room is painted in warm colours, so it never feels bare.”
5verbbecomeTo make something a little hot, or to become a little hot.A2~32%
“Warm the pan before the butter goes in.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

wARM → an ARM round you by the fire

Somebody puts an arm round you by the fire, and you feel warm all the way through.

hooks ontoarm

Phrases it lives in

warm up — to get your body ready with light exercise, or to heat something a little
warm to someone — to begin to like them
you're getting warmer — said in a guessing game when somebody is close to the answer

Where it comes from

Warm is old, and the top of its family tree is uncertain. Old English wearm goes back through Proto-West Germanic *warm to Proto-Germanic *warmaz, and beyond that the trail forks — one candidate is the Proto-Indo-European root *gʷʰer-, and the question has never been settled. Words this ordinary are the hardest of all to trace, because people said them for thousands of years before anybody wrote them down.

Proto-Indo-European
*gʷʰer-
Middle English
warm
English, today
warm

From Middle English warm. From Middle English warm, werm, from Old English wearm, from Proto-West Germanic warm, from Proto-Germanic warmaz, from one of:

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, Everyday Adjectives

Practise this word

warm in the wild

In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game.
Bullpen
The starting pitcher also makes his final pregame warm-up throws in the bullpen.
Bullpen
Cold fronts generally move from west to east, whereas warm fronts move poleward, although any direction is possible.
Weather front
The spacecraft bus is on the Sun-facing "warm" side and operates at a temperature of about 300 kelvins.
Spacecraft bus (James Webb Space Telescope)
Stroh Austria GmbH is an Austrian manufacturer of liquors, especially spiced rums and high-proof rum-like drinks used in warm drinks and cooking.
Stroh

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of warm

1adjectivewarmA little hot, in a pleasant way.A1~43%

“The stones were still warm from the afternoon sun.”

Said"Come in, it's warm by the stove. You look frozen."
WrittenThe plates were warmer than the food, and the butter melted the moment it touched them.
UsedKeep the bread warm under a cloth until everyone is sitting down.
ContrastWarm, not hot. Hot burns your tongue; warm is the bath you could stay in. hot →
Not thisSoup straight from the pan is not warm; it scalds. Warm is what it becomes while you talk.

Patternwarm + noun (water, bread, day) · keep / stay warm · warm up · warmer than · warmth

2adjectivekeepingKeeping the cold out.A1~21%

“Take a warm coat; it drops below zero at night.”

3adjectiveaffectionateFriendly and kind.A2~2%

“She gave him a warm welcome at the door.”

synonyms: kindly, affectionate

4adjectivecolourOf a colour: containing red, orange or yellow.B1~2%

“The room is painted in warm colours, so it never feels bare.”

5verbbecomeTo make something a little hot, or to become a little hot.A2~32%

“Warm the pan before the butter goes in.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.