melts

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of melt.

   The glacier melts a little more with each passing summer.

   Solder melts at a relatively low temperature compared to steel.

   Note

   Here one form serves two roles, because melt works both ways: the ice melts, and the sun melts the ice. The same split runs through the figurative uses. A crowd melts away and a heart melts on its own, while kindness melts a hard temper from outside. In colloquial speech, someone who melts is simply very hot and sweating through the heat.

   The afternoon sun melts the frost off the windshield.

   Her resolve melts the moment he apologizes.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of melt.

   The café added several new melts to its winter menu.

   The foundry logged four copper melts before the shift ended.

   Note

   A plural that only works where the noun can be counted. A café's melts are sandwiches, a geologist's are bodies of remelted rock, and wax melts are the wax-based pieces used in an oil burner instead of oil and water. Where melt names the process or a mass of molten material, the singular usually does the work: people speak of the spring melt, not the spring melts.

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