Definition

1. Verb:
   • To suffer from intense, oppressive heat: To experience physical discomfort or distress due to extremely hot weather or conditions.
   • To be uncomfortably hot: To be in a state of excessive, often humid, heat that causes sweating and fatigue.

Usage

• Swelter is an intransitive verb, meaning it does not take a direct object. It describes the state of the subject.
• It is often used in continuous tenses (e.g., , ) to emphasize an ongoing, uncomfortable state of heat.
• It can describe both people/animals experiencing the heat and the atmosphere/weather causing it.

Examples

• Verb:
  • The city sweltered under a record-breaking heatwave for a week.
  • We were sweltering in the crowded, unairconditioned room.
  • The players sweltered on the field during the midday match.

Advanced Usage

• Sweltering (Adjective): Used to describe something that causes or is characterized by intense, oppressive heat.
  • We endured a sweltering August afternoon.
  • The air in the subway was sweltering.

Variants and Related Words

• Swelter (Noun, archaic/less common): A state of oppressive heat.
  • They escaped the swelter of the city for the mountains.
• Sweltering (Adj): Extremely and uncomfortably hot.
• Swelteringly (Adv): In an extremely hot manner.
  • The day was swelteringly humid.

Synonyms

• Boil: To be very hot (informal).
• Roast: To be exposed to great heat.
• Bake: To be subjected to dry, intense heat.
• Sweat it out: To endure heat while perspiring (idiomatic).

Phrasal Verbs

(This word does not commonly form phrasal verbs.)

Related Idioms

• To swelter in the heat: The standard construction for experiencing hot conditions.
  • The refugees had to swelter in the heat without adequate shelter.

Verb

1. suffer from intense heat
   • we were sweltering at the beach
2. be uncomfortably hot