Refroze

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To freeze again after having thawed
2. to become solid once more as a result of low temperatures
3. to undergo the process of turning back into ice after previously melting

Etymology: "Refroze" is the simple past of "refreeze", which is formed from the prefix "re-", meaning "again" (from Latin "re-"), and the verb "freeze". Its ancestry therefore runs through the older verb "freeze" rather than being a separate coinage. The base verb descends from Old English "frēosan", which carried the sense of becoming cold enough to turn solid, and which goes back through Proto-Germanic "freusaną" to a Proto-Indo-European root linked to frost and cold. Middle English "fresen" later developed into the modern "freeze", so the verb has been describing the same change of state for well over a thousand years. The prefix arrived in English through Old French "re-", itself inherited from Latin, and English has long attached it to ordinary verbs to mean "once more." "Refreeze" is thus a transparent compound: water that has been thawed and then turns solid again has, quite literally, been frozen a second time.

Synonyms: re-froze