broil

verb

1. (Canada, US, obsolete, transitive)To cook by direct, radiant heat.

   “To broil a pigeon. When you broil them, do them in the same manner, and take care your fire is very clear, and set your gridiron high, that they may not burn, and have a little parsley and butter in a cup. You may split them, and broil them with a little pepper and salt, and you may roast them only with a little parsley and butter in a dish.”

   “To broil Red Mullet. Neither seale nor gut your mullet, wipe them very clean in a cloth, butter half a sheet of writing paper for each fish, put them in, and fasten it all round; have a very clear fire, broil them very gently for twenty minutes, hen put them in a dish, with anchovy sauce and plain butter in boats.”

   “To broil fish. To broil trout in a third way. When they are cleaned and washed, dry them well in a napkin. Then bind them about with packthread, sprinkle them with melted butter and salt, and broil them over a gentle fire, turning them from time to time.”

2. (Canada, US, transitive)To expose to great heat.
3. (Canada, US, intransitive)To be exposed to great heat.
4. (transitive)To cause a rowdy disturbance; embroil.
5. (intransitive, obsolete)To brawl.

noun

1. Food prepared by broiling.

   “Cluffe, externally acquiescing, had yet made up his mind, if a decent opportunity presented, to be detected and made prisoner, and that the honest troubadours should sup on a hot broil, and sip some of the absent General's curious Madeira at the feet of their respective mistresses, with all the advantage which a situation so romantic and so private would offer.”

2. (archaic)A brawl; a rowdy disturbance.

   “come to broils”

   “But to give the faireſt Play to every ſide of the Queſtion, I vvill own that there is a Haughtineſs, and Fierceneſs in human Nature, vvhich vvill cauſe innumerable Broils, place Men in vvhat State you pleaſe; but ovvning this, I ſtill inſiſt in charging to Political Regulations, that theſe Broils are ſo frequent, ſo cruel, and attended vvith ſo deplorable Conſequences.”

   “"Away with this prating dotard," said Front-de Boeuf, "lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut out of stone."”

   “So, I am safe emerged from these broils! / Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole […]”

   “Since the provinces declared their independence, broils and squabblings of one sort and another have greatly retarded the advancement which they might otherwise have made.”