Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To pass from the liquid to the solid state by loss of heat.
  • intransitive verb To acquire a surface or coat of ice from cold.
  • intransitive verb To become clogged or jammed because of the formation of ice.
  • intransitive verb To be at that degree of temperature at which ice forms.
  • intransitive verb To be killed or harmed by cold or frost.
  • intransitive verb To be or feel uncomfortably cold.
  • intransitive verb To become fixed, stuck, or attached by or as if by frost.
  • intransitive verb To stop functioning properly, usually temporarily.
  • intransitive verb To become motionless or immobile, as from surprise or attentiveness.
  • intransitive verb To become unable to act or speak, as from fear.
  • intransitive verb To become rigid and inflexible; solidify.
  • intransitive verb To convert into ice.
  • intransitive verb To cause ice to form upon.
  • intransitive verb To cause to congeal or stiffen from extreme cold.
  • intransitive verb To preserve (foods, for example) by subjecting to freezing temperatures.
  • intransitive verb To damage, kill, or make inoperative by cold or by the formation of ice.
  • intransitive verb To make very cold; chill.
  • intransitive verb To immobilize, as with fear or shock.
  • intransitive verb To chill with an icy or formal manner.
  • intransitive verb To stop the motion or progress of.
  • intransitive verb To fix (prices or wages, for example) at a given or current level.
  • intransitive verb To prohibit further manufacture or use of.
  • intransitive verb To prevent or restrict the exchange, withdrawal, liquidation, or granting of by governmental action.
  • intransitive verb To anesthetize by chilling.
  • intransitive verb Sports To keep possession of (a ball or puck) so as to deny an opponent the opportunity to score.
  • noun The act of freezing.
  • noun The state of being frozen.
  • noun A spell of cold weather; a frost.
  • noun A restriction that forbids a quantity from rising above a given or current level.
  • idiom (freeze (someone's) blood) To affect with terror or dread; horrify.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See frieze.
  • noun Frost or its results; chilling or freezing conditions: as, there was a strong freeze last night.
  • To congeal; harden into ice; change from a fluid to a solid form by cold or abstraction of heat.
  • To affect with frost; stiffen, harden, injure, kill, etc., by congealing the fluid portions of; hence, to produce some analogous effect in.
  • As a knight of old, at the very moment when he would else have unhorsed his opponent, was often frozen into unjust inactivity by the king's arbitrary signal for parting the tilters.
  • To chill with cold; produce the sensation of intense cold in.
  • To be congealed by cold; be changed from a liquid to a solid state by the abstraction of heat; be hardened into ice or into a solid body by cold: as, water freezes at the temperature of 32° F.
  • To be of that degree of cold at which water congeals: often used impersonally to describe the state of the weather: as, it is freezing tonight.
  • To suffer the effects of intense cold; be stiffened, hardened, or impaired by cold.
  • Figuratively, to be or become chilled; suffer greatly from the sensation of cold.
  • To cause a sensation of great cold.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To become congealed by cold; to be changed from a liquid to a solid state by the abstraction of heat; to be hardened into ice or a like solid body.
  • intransitive verb To become chilled with cold, or as with cold; to suffer loss of animation or life by lack of heat.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English fresen, from Old English frēosan; see preus- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English fresen, from Old English frēosan ("to freeze"), from Proto-Germanic *freusanan (“to frost, freeze”), from Proto-Indo-European *preus-, *prus- (“to frost, freeze”). Cognate with Scots frese ("to freeze"), West Frisian frieze ("to freeze"), Dutch vriezen ("to freeze"), German frieren ("to freeze"), Swedish frysa ("to freeze"), Latin pruīna ("hoarfrost"), Welsh (Northern) rhew ("frost, ice"), and Sanskrit  (pruṣvá, "water drop, frost").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word freeze.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • A definition of freeze is missing here. From Wikipedia: "Siamese twins (also irreversible binomials,1 binomials,1 binomial pairs, nonreversible word pairs,2 or freezes) in the context of the English language refer to a pair or group of words used together as an idiomatic expression or collocation, usually conjoined by the words and or or. The order of elements cannot be reversed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siamese_twins_(linguistics)

    September 4, 2017