Frost
nounA thin white layer of ice crystals that forms on cold surfaces, or the freezing weather that produces it.
How to spell frost
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce frost
What does frost mean?
- nounA thin white layer of ice crystals that forms on cold surfaces, or the freezing weather that produces it.
- verbTo cover or become covered with frost, or to coat a cake with icing.
Frost in a sentence
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noun
A heavy frost covered the windscreen this morning.
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verb
Cold air can frost the inside of the windows overnight.
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noun
The gardener covered the seedlings to protect them from frost.
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verb
She likes to frost the cake with thick buttercream.
Where does frost come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Frost is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English 'forst' or 'frost', which named the frozen film of ice that forms in cold weather. It traces back to the Proto-Germanic 'frustaz', built on a root meaning 'to freeze', and it has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including German 'Frost' and Dutch 'vorst'. The same ancient root also gave English the everyday verb 'freeze', so the two words are siblings rather than coincidental look-alikes. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years, which is why it holds no real trap: it is written just as it sounds. Because the word is so old and so phonetically regular, it survived the French-influenced respellings that complicated many other English words.
How the word is built
- frost (single Old English root meaning frozen moisture); no prefix or suffix
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