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fridge

FRIJ/fɹɪd͡ʒ/

Pluralfridges

Verbfridges, fridging, fridged

6 meanings of fridge

Practice

  1. 1
    nouncolloquialcountable
    A refrigerator, the household appliance that keeps food and drinks cold.

    She kept a stash of chocolate at the back of the fridge.

    The office fridge was crammed with everyone's leftover lunches.

    Similarrefrigerator

    Note

    The word is cut down from refrigerator, perhaps nudged along by the Frigidaire brand or by the dated short form frigerator. The d before the g has no source in refrigerator. It comes by analogy with bridge and ridge, which gave the clipped word a spelling that looks native. Fridge is the everyday word, and refrigerator remains the safer choice for manuals and formal writing.

  2. 2
    verbcolloquialtransitive
    To place something inside a refrigerator so that it chills.

    Could you fridge the dessert until we're ready to serve it?

    They fridge the dough overnight so it firms up before baking.

    Similarchill, refrigerate

    Note

    The verb was made directly from the noun, and it keeps the noun's casual air: the relaxed counterpart of refrigerate. It is at home in kitchen talk and recipes. James Morton's Brilliant Bread (2013) has bakers fridging their remaining doughs between batches. The silent e drops before -ing (fridging) and merges into -d in the past (fridged). That past form is shared with the storytelling slang, so context decides which is meant.

  3. 3
    verbslangtransitive
    To gratuitously kill, disempower, or remove a character (usually female) from a story, often solely to hurt another character (usually male) and drive a desire for revenge.

    Critics slammed the sequel for choosing to fridge its only major female lead.

    Too many comics fridge the girlfriend in the first act to jump-start the hero's arc.

    Note

    Fandom slang born in comics talk and now applied to film and television. In 2013 Siobhan Whitebread still sets 'fridged' in quote marks and explains it. A year later Dave Van Domelen calls Gwen Stacy's death a fridging from 'long before that was a thing.' The word is a criticism of the writer, not a neutral plot summary, and the gerund works as a verdict: 'more than a hint of fridging.'

Less common meanings

  1. 4
    verbarchaicBritishtransitive
    To chafe or rub something, often to the point of wearing or fraying it.

    The ill-fitting saddle began to fridge the horse's flank on the long ride.

    Sailors complained that the coarse wool would fridge their wrists.

    Note

    This is a different word from the kitchen fridge, probably imitating the sound of rubbing, and the two share only their spelling. It belongs to older and British dialect English. D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913) has a town 'fridging the crest away' with spires and chimneys, a skyline frayed against the sky. Treat it as archaic. In modern prose, most readers will hear the appliance first.

  2. 5
    verbobsoleteintransitive
    To chafe or rub against a surface.

    The rigging would fridge against the mast whenever the wind shifted.

    Coarse seams tend to fridge where they press against the skin.

    Note

    Here the rubbing thing is the subject and nothing is rubbed: a rope fridges against a mast, rather than a saddle fridging a flank. It is the intransitive side of the dialect verb for chafing. Its transitive partner lingers as archaic regional speech, but this use is fully obsolete. It is something to recognize in old texts rather than to write today.

  3. 6
    verbobsoleteintransitive
    To move restlessly; to jostle, shake, or fidget.

    Similarfidge

    Note

    Here fridge simply doubles fidge, an old verb of jostling and shaking that keeps company with fidget and fig. It is intransitive. It describes the restless person or animal itself, with no object, and its movement is twitching and fidgeting rather than the steady friction of the obsolete chafing verb. Being obsolete, it is a word to recognize when reading, not one to revive.

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of fridge apart? Answer 4 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origins

Meanings 1–3

The noun is a clipping of "refrigerator," perhaps influenced by the Frigidaire brand or the dated form "frigerator," with the spelling likely shaped by analogy with words like "bridge" and "ridge." The verb comes from the noun, and a fandom slang sense alludes to the phrase "women in refrigerators," coined by American comic book writer Gail Simone.

Meanings 4–6

This is probably imitative of the sound of chafing or rubbing.