The verb melt could come from the Latin reterĕre , which refers 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 make the glaciers melt,” “To prepare the sauce, you have to melt the chocolate in milk and then add walnuts and crushed almonds.” .
The act of melting is linked to fusion or casting since the matter registers a change of state: it leaves the solid state and goes to the liquid state due to the effect of heat. Heating the solid causes heat to be transferred to the atoms, which gain energy and begin to vibrate more quickly.
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 remove the ice from the freezer, it will experience an increase in temperature. Thus, when it reaches 0° C , it will begin to melt . This means that the ice will become liquid.
This explains why, when we are served ice cream and the product becomes at room temperature, it begins to melt shortly after.
The concept of melting is usually used to describe situations that we perceive in a negative way. 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 on our hands, and this can be very annoying, especially if an experience that It should be pleasant if a new garment is ruined for us.
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 an object valuable to us. Melting, after all, is a way of saying "to decompose, to break, to pass into a state of uselessness or inferior to the original."
Another area in which the verb melt is considered negative is environmental care, where the melting of the polar caps is discussed. Year after year, the snow that accumulates on the bottoms of valleys and slopes forms layers of ice 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 cap .
The polar caps and glaciers provide the largest amount of water to the planet and each year the polar ice melts more rapidly. Some experts estimate that by the 22nd century, 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 they feel great admiration for them, or that they are in a state of love that prevents them from maintaining their composure when they are around them.
It is normal that when we feel attracted to someone we smile too much when they talk to us, or that we find it difficult to speak fluently, and we attribute all this to an internal "tingling" sensation, generally in the stomach, which weakens us but at the same time makes us good. This leads us to feel smaller, as if we shrink when we are in front of another, as if our body melts due to the heat that their presence causes us.