Frosty

How to spell frosty

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce frosty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does frosty mean?

1. adjectiveVery cold, or covered with a thin layer of frost.
2. adjectiveCold and unfriendly in manner or tone.

Frosty in a sentence

• The car windscreen was frosty when she left for work.

• She gave him a frosty reception after the missed deadline.

• A frosty wind cut across the empty car park.

• Relations between the two managers stayed frosty for months.

Where does frosty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English noun 'frost', which descends from the Old English 'forst' or 'frost', meaning the freezing of water and the white crystals it leaves behind. That noun belongs to a family of Germanic words tied to the verb 'freeze', and close relatives survive in Dutch 'vorst' and German 'Frost', all tracing back to a shared root meaning 'to freeze'. Adding the productive suffix '-y', which turns a noun into an adjective meaning 'full of' or 'marked by', gave 'frosty' the literal sense of covered in or producing frost. By the 1500s the word had also picked up a figurative sense describing a cold, unfriendly manner, drawing the obvious parallel between chilly weather and a chilly reception. The spelling is refreshingly regular, with the only mild trap being the single 's' and the '-y' ending rather than '-ie'.

How the word is built

• frost (Old English frost: freezing, ice crystals)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning full of or characterised by)