The verb to melt could come from the Latin reterĕre, which alludes to the friction that wears something down. The notion refers to the dissolution of a solid element through the application of heat, which turns it into a liquid.
For example: “If you don’t hurry, your ice cream will melt”, ” Global warming could melt the glaciers”, “To prepare the sauce, you have to melt the chocolate in milk and then add crushed walnuts and almonds”.
The act of melting is linked to fusion or smelting since the matter registers a change of state: it leaves the solid state and passes to the liquid state due to the effect of heat. The heating of the solid causes the heat to be transferred to the atoms, which, as they gain energy, begin to vibrate more quickly. See Abbreviation Finder for acronyms related to Melt.
A solid becomes a liquid when it reaches its melting point. In the case of water, to cite one case, the melting point is 0 °C. That is also the solidification point (liquid becomes solid). An ice cube is in the freezer at a temperature below 0 °C: that is why it is solid. If we extract the ice from the freezer, it will experience an increase in temperature. Thus, when it reaches 0°C, it will start to melt. This means that the ice will gradually become liquid.
This explains why, when we are served ice cream and the product comes to room temperature, it begins to melt after a short time.
The concept of melting is often used to describe situations that we perceive negatively. To continue with the example of ice cream, when we do not eat it in time and it begins to melt, it is normal for us to stain our clothes with the drops that fall or slide through our hands, and this can be very annoying, especially if an experience that should be pleasant ruins us a new garment.
On the other hand, if by mistake we leave a product that is too sensitive to heat near a stove or oven and part of its structure melts, this can result in an accident or the loss of a valuable object for us. Melting, after all, is a way of saying “decompose, break, go to a state of uselessness or inferior to the original.”
Another field in which the verb to melt is considered negative is the care of the environment, where the melting of the polar ice caps is spoken of. Year after year, the snow that accumulates in the bottoms of valleys and slopes forms ice sheets that, sooner or later, become too heavy and then begin to move. At that moment they become a glacier, and when it covers high-latitude terrain, it is called a polar ice cap.
The polar ice caps and glaciers provide the largest amount of water to the planet and each year the polar ice melts faster. Some experts estimate that by the 22nd century the ice could disappear from the Arctic.
Of course, if we understand the term figuratively, everything changes. When we say that a person melts in the presence of another, we mean that he feels great admiration for her, or that he is in a state of infatuation that prevents him from maintaining his composure when he is near her.
It is normal that when we feel attracted to someone we smile too much when he speaks to us, or that it is difficult for us to speak fluently, and we attribute all this to an internal “tickling” sensation, generally in the stomach, which weakens us but at the same time makes us right. This leads us to feel smaller, as if we shrink when we are in front of the other, as if our body melts before the heat that their presence causes us.
