parch (v.)

late 14c., "to roast or dry" (peas, beans, corn, etc.), a word of uncertain origin. Klein and OED reject derivations from Old North French perchier (Old French percer) "to pierce" and Latin persiccare "to dry thoroughly." Century Dictionary, The Middle English Compendium, and Barnhart suggest it could be from Middle English perchen, a variant of perishen "to perish" (see perish). Klein "tentatively" suggests a back-formation from parchment. A surname Parchecorn is attested from mid-14c. Meaning "to dry with excessive heat, expose to the strong action of fire but without burning" is from mid-15c. Related: Parched; parching.

also from late 14c.

Entries linking to parch

perish (v.)

late 13c., perishen, "to die, be killed, pass away; suffer spiritual death, be damned," from periss- present participle stem of Old French perir "perish, be lost, be shipwrecked" (12c.), from Latin perire "to be lost, perish," literally "to go through," from per "through, completely, to destruction" (from PIE root *per- (1) "forward," hence "through") + ire "to go" (from PIE root *ei- "to go").

From mid-14c. of physical objects, "decay, come to destruction." In Middle English also transitive, "to destroy, to kill" (c. 1300). Related: Perished; perishing. Perisher is by 1888 as a term of contempt, originally "one who destroys," but it was sometimes used with an overtone of pity, as if "one likely to perish."

Trends of parch

adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/. Ngrams are probably unreliable.

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sear

Middle English seren, from Old English searian (intransitive), of plants, "dry up, to wither, become shriveled" (a sense now rare or obsolete), from Proto-Germanic *saurajan (source also of Middle Dutch soor "dry," Old High German soren "become dry"), from root of sear "dried up,

skeleton

skeleton," from neuter of skeletos "dried-up" (also, as a noun, "dried body, mummy"), from skellein "dry up, make dry, parch..." (from PIE root *skele- "to parch, wither;" see sclero-)....

scorch

but so as to change the color or injure the texture," early 14c., scorchen, perhaps an alteration of scorcnen "make dry, parch...

rase

late 14c., "remove by scraping, rub, erase," especially "to remove writing by scruaping it out," from Old French raser "to scrape, shave," from Medieval Latin rasare, frequentative of Latin radere (past participle rasus) "to scrape, shave" (see raze (v.)). Meaning "level to the g

dry

Middle English drie "without moisture, comparatively free from water or fluid," from Old English dryge, from Proto-Germanic *draugiz (source also of Middle Low German dröge, Middle Dutch druge, Dutch droog, Old High German trucchon, German trocken, Old Norse draugr), from Germani

parchment

c. 1300, parchemin (c. 1200 as a surname), "the skin of sheep or goats prepared for use as writing material," from Old French parchemin (11c., Old North French parcamin) and directly from Medieval Latin pergamentum, percamentum, from Late Latin pergamena "parchment," a noun use o

turkey

1540s, originally "guinea fowl" (Numida meleagris), a bird imported from Madagascar via Turkey, and called guinea fowl when brought by Portuguese traders from West Africa. The larger North American bird (Meleagris gallopavo) was domesticated by the Aztecs, introduced to Spain by

diaphragm

late 14c., diafragma, in anatomy, "muscular membrane which separates the thorax from the abdominal cavity in mammals," from Late Latin diaphragma, from Greek diaphragma "partition, barrier, muscle which divides the thorax from the abdomen," from diaphrassein "to barricade," from

America

1507, "the western hemisphere, North and South America," in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's treatise "Cosmographiae Introductio," from Modern Latin Americanus, traditionally after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to h

oven

Old English ofen "furnace, oven, chamber or receptacle in which food is baked or cooked by continuous heat radiated from the structure," from Proto-Germanic *ukhnaz (source also of Old Frisian, Dutch oven, Old High German ovan, German Ofen, Old Norse ofn, Old Swedish oghn, Gothic

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updated on October 08, 2022

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pardon

pardonable