torch

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small electric lamp you hold in your hand; a flashlight.

   She used a torch to find her way through the dark cave.

2. 2
   noun

   A burning stick or flame carried to give light.

   The angry villagers carried torches up to the castle.

3. 3
   verb

   To deliberately set something on fire.

   Someone torched the abandoned warehouse last night.

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Simplified etymology

Torch entered Middle English and derives from Latin torquere, “to twist.” In its original sense, a torch was something soaked in a flammable substance to provide light and was often made from twisted hemp or other fibres. Only British English uses torch for a battery-powered lamp, a sense recorded from the late 19th century; Americans call this a flashlight. Torch song, used since the 1920s, comes from carry a torch for someone, meaning to love someone who does not return that love. Pass on the torch, found in various forms since the mid-17th century, evokes relay runners passing a torch, as in the ancient Greek Olympic Games.

The noun is derived from Middle English torch, torche (“large candle; lighted stick; (figurative) sunbeam”), from Old French torche, torque (“torch; bundle of (twisted) straw”) (modern French torche); further etymology uncertain, probably from Vulgar Latin *torca (“coiled object”) (referring to a torch made from twisted plant fibres dipped in a flammable substance such as pitch), from Latin torqua, a variant of torquis (“collar of twisted metal, torque; wreath”), from torqueō (“to twist, wind”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to spin; to turn”). Sense 2.3 (Verbascum thapsus) is…

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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