Freezer

How to spell freezer

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce freezer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does freezer mean?

1. nounAn appliance or compartment that keeps food and other items frozen for storage.

Freezer in a sentence

• She stacked the leftover soup in the freezer for next week.

• The freezer stopped working overnight and everything thawed.

Where does freezer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the verb 'freeze', which descends from the Old English 'freosan', meaning 'to turn to ice' or 'to be very cold'. That early verb belonged to a wider family of Germanic words for frost and icy weather, and it shares a distant ancestry with the Latin 'pruina', meaning 'hoarfrost'. The agent suffix '-er', also of Germanic origin, attaches to verbs to name the person or device that performs the action, so a 'freezer' is literally 'something that freezes'. The mechanical sense, an appliance or compartment for keeping food frozen, only became common in the twentieth century as domestic refrigeration spread into ordinary homes. The spelling keeps the double 'e' of 'freeze' and simply adds '-er', which is the easiest way to remember why it is not spelled with a single vowel.

How the word is built

• freez- (from freeze, to turn to ice)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix: a thing that does the action)