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Heat Haze

Quick Detail: A wavering distortion caused by rising heat.

Definition: Heat haze appears when hot air rises from roads, fields, rooftops, or dry ground, bending light as it moves. The result is a shimmering blur that makes distant shapes tremble and shift. Familiar places can look uncertain beneath it, as though the world has softened at the edges. Heat haze often arrives in bright conditions, not darkness, which gives it a strange unease. The word captures summer air turning visibility into illusion.

Used in a sentence
  • The heat haze made the cemetery look like it was moving again. The cemetery denied everything.
  • By noon the heat haze had turned the road into a lake, which was still less misleading than the town's welcome sign.

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