0 to burn the surface of something with sudden very strong heat:
1 to burn the surface of something with very high heat, or to cook meat quickly at a high temperature to keep in the juices and flavor:
There is nothing that sears the human soul as much as having constantly to share common services with other people.
Presumably the gas experience has seared him for ever.
We realise that it sears a man's soul for years to come.
Their souls are seared and soured by the state of society in which they live.
Each swelling the gains of some middleman whose heart is seared by the recollection of his own poverty, and who learns to grind as he was once ground by others.
I told the story of the occasion which is seared on my childish consciousness—when my father was refused a ration book on the grounds that he was illiterate.
The visual horror of a burns unit or an orthopædic ward sears the mind and the conscience in a way that no amount of lecturing can do.
The damage done by the poll tax is now too well attested to and too deeply seared into the nation's collective experience to require much by way of elaboration.
