English

Verb

sunbake ‎(third-person singular simple present sunbakes, present participle sunbaking, simple past and past participle sunbaked)

1. To bake in the sun.
   • 2005, Gillian Mears, Here is the Heartflower, Frank Moorhouse (editor), The Best Australian Stories 2005, page 136,

     Oh, she wants to moan with pain, thinking of Richard lying down on the sunbaking rock, naked as well.

   • 2005, MaryLee Knowlton, Uzbekistan, page 103,

     Their pots also were made of sunbaked mud, unfired and unglazed, though sometimes richly engraved.

   • 2005 September, Grant Parsons, Cajun Coast, American Motorcyclist, page 29,

     We roll in just before sunset, after all the day-tourists have left, and the sunbaked collection of cabins, aging hotels, restaurants and oil depots has a strangely deserted feel that′s oddly appealing.

   • 2011, Sera L. Young, Craving Earth: Understanding Pica: the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk, page 64,

     Larvae do not survive well in the clayey soils preferred by most geophagists, and if they do, they are generally killed by the sunbaking, air drying, and heating that many geophagists do to their soil prior to consumption (cf. chapter 1).

2. (Australia, New Zealand) To sunbathe.
   • 2003, Caroline Daley, Leisure and Pleasure, Auckland University Press, page 132,

     Ancient precedents were important in establishing the long, lost history of the benefits of sunbaking. Journalists noted that ‘The ancients′ had recognised the importance of sunlight as a cure for disease; now modern New Zealanders had to do the same.

   • 2006, Sharyn Munro, The Woman on the Mountain, 2010, ReadHowYouWant, page 249,

     It was spent supervising sandcastles and shell collections, soggy towels and gritty kids, with hardly a minute to ourselves for sunbaking.

   • 2007, Lee Mylne, Frommer′s Portable Australia′s Great Barrier Reef, page 66,

     The boat carries only 14 passengers and makes a stop at Michaelmas Cay where you can get off the boat, sunbake on the cay, swim in the shallow waters, and snorkel off the beach.

   • 2009, Anna Goldsworthy, Piano Lessons, page 105,

     Inspired, I spent the summer holidays practising Chopin instead of sunbaking by Sophia′s pool.

Related terms

• sunbaker