broil1
/brɔɪl
/verb [with object] North American
1Cook (meat or fish) by exposure to direct heat: he lightly broiled a wedge of sea bass (as adjective broiled) a broiled sirloin steak...
- Grill and broil your meats, which melts the fat.
- When you grill, fry, or broil meat, it forms carcinogenic compounds.
- If you told me that my fish was broiled, I used to think that meant it was thrown directly on a flame or cooked in an ancient Mayan crockpot.
Synonyms
grill, toast, barbecue, cook, fry, bake
1.1 [no object] Become very hot, especially from the sun: the countryside lay broiling in the sun...
- Young Tess and her neighborhood friends are broiling in the hot sun, their inner city block having been deprived of moisture for a long time.
- And if you're not broiling in the sun and wearing enough sunscreen, you're safe, right?
- In the afternoon everyone's broiling in the pit; at rush hour it's dense and frenetic.
Synonyms
hot, scorching, roasting, baking, boiling (hot), blistering, sweltering, parching, searing, blazing, sizzling, burning (hot), sultry, torrid, tropical, like an oven, like a furnace
Origin
Late Middle English (also in the sense 'burn, char'): from Old French bruler 'to burn', of unknown origin.
Rhymes
broil2
/brɔɪl/noun archaic
A quarrel or commotion: the dark interior was a broil of fighting men...
- The recent broil over Baraka's recital of the poem ‘Somebody Blew Up America’ has only served to intensify the poet's controversial status.
- An ensuing exchange with the woman's male partner, and Dix quickly gets into a broil.
- When Cleopatra speaks for the first time, she too wants to assert her own role as an evil woman in this broil, but her serving women, Charmion and Eras, refuse to allow her an easy passage to her proposed death.
Origin
Early 16th century: from obsolete broil 'to muddle'. Compare with embroil.