melt

英文词源

melt

melt: [OE] Melt goes back ultimately to an Indo- European *meld-, *mold-, *mld-, denoting ‘softness’, which also produced English mild and Latin mollis ‘soft’ (source of English mollify and mollusc). Its prehistoric Germanic descendant *melt-, *malt- produced the verb *maltjan ‘dissolve’, which has become English melt. Malt comes from the same Germanic source, and smelt [15], a borrowing from Middle Low German, goes back to *smelt-, a variant of the base *melt-.
=> malt, mild, mollify, mollusc, smelt

melt (v.)

Old English meltan "become liquid, consume by fire, burn up" (class III strong verb; past tense mealt, past participle molten), from Proto-Germanic *meltanan; fused with Old English gemæltan (Anglian), gemyltan (West Saxon) "make liquid," from Proto-Germanic *gamaltijan (cognates: Old Norse melta "to digest"), both from PIE *meldh-, (cognates: Sanskrit mrduh "soft, mild," Greek meldein "to melt, make liquid," Latin mollis "soft, mild"), from root *mel- "soft," with derivatives referring to soft or softened (especially ground) materials (see mild). Figurative use by c. 1200. Related: Melted; melting.

Of food, to melt in (one's) mouth is from 1690s. Melting pot is from 1540s; figurative use from 1855; popularized with reference to America by play "The Melting Pot" by Israel Zangwill (1908).

melt (n.)

1854, "molten metal," from melt (v.). In reference to a type of sandwich topped by melted cheese, 1980, American English.