Unthawing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To make something that is frozen become unfrozen or warmer; to transition from a state of being solidly frozen to a liquid or softer form; to emerge from a state of frost or ice into a more fluid condition
2. The process of raising the temperature of a frozen item, allowing it to shift from ice back to liquid; changing solid ice into a more usable state through warming; the act of thawing out an item that was previously frozen
3. Converting solidly frozen material into a more pliable and usable state through heat; moving from a condition of being frozen solid to being liquid or soft; the transformation of icy substances back into their non-frozen forms

Etymology: "Unthawing" is the present participle of "unthaw", which is built from the prefix "un-" and the verb "thaw". Here the prefix is an intensifier, not a reversal: "unthaw" does not mean the opposite of thawing so much as an emphatic form of it, a bringing-back-from-frost that the plain verb lacks. The root "thaw" has a much older pedigree. It descends from Old English and Middle English words of the same sense, reaching back through Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic forms, but its story in English is simple: a native word for melting ice and snow, used long before any sense of softening or loosening was attached to it. The prefix "un-" is the more striking half of the pairing. In English it usually reverses a verb ("unlock", "undo"), yet here it reinforces the action, so "unthaw" and "thaw" sit almost side by side in meaning. The combination shows how a prefix that normally flips a meaning can also simply intensify one.

Synonyms: freezing, refreezing, hardening

Antonyms: thawing, melting, defrosting