the.com/swelter
the slow-roast verb your body invents when the air decides to cook you alive
means To suffer from oppressive, sweaty heat — to feel uncomfortably hot and worn down by it.
from From Middle English 'swelten,' meaning to faint, swoon, or even die — itself from Old English 'sweltan,' to perish. The word carried a heavy weight: to swelter once meant to be overcome to the point of collapse. Over time it cooled (ironically) into the specific sense of being overcome by heat, and the frequentative '-er' ending gave it that lingering, repeated-suffering quality. A distant cousin of 'sultry,' which shares the same overheated root.
- old roots
- From Old English sweltan, meaning to die or perish
- deadly cousin
- Same ancestor as sweltry and the rarer sweltering death
- sweat science
- Humans cool by evaporating up to a liter hourly
- wet-bulb limit
- At 35C wet-bulb, sweat fails and bodies overheat
death valley record heat — 134°f (56.7°c) recorded in july 1913, highest reliably recorded temperature on earth
kuwait city 2016 — 54°c (129.2°f) in july 2016, hottest temperature ever reliably recorded in asia
phoenix arizona summer — 143 days above 100°f in 2023, longest extreme heat streak in a us city