torrent: [17] Despite its firm connections with ‘water’, torrent comes from a source that meant ‘scorch, parch’. This was Latin torrēre, which also produced English toast and torrid [16] and is related to thirst. Its present participle torrēns was used metaphorically as an adjective of streams that ‘boil’ or ‘bubble’ because of their strong current, and it was in this sense that it passed as a noun via Italian torrente and French torrent into English. => thirst, toast, torrid
