refrigerator
Pluralrefrigerators
- 1A household or commercial appliance that keeps food fresh by cooling it through refrigeration.
A good refrigerator keeps dairy products safe for days longer than an open pantry.
The restaurant's walk-in refrigerators held hundreds of pounds of produce at a steady chill.
Note
The everyday word comes straight from Medieval Latin refrīgerātor, "cooler," and in ordinary speech it is usually clipped to fridge. Louisa May Alcott has Jo forget to put the milk in the refrigerator in Little Women (1868). The appliance is familiar enough to work as a yardstick of bulk: The Economist in 2013 calls a dialysis machine refrigerator-sized, hyphenated before the noun it describes.
- 2
- 3A person who has a chilling effect on others, dampening warmth or good cheer in a group.
His grim silence made him the refrigerator of the dinner party, freezing every attempt at conversation.
She could be such a refrigerator, cooling the room the moment she disagreed.
Similarkilljoy, spoilsport, damper
Note
A metaphor borrowed from the kitchen appliance: someone who chills a gathering the way the machine chills milk. Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1852–53) shows its ironic edge, with a self-satisfied man moving among the company as "a magnificent refrigerator." The grand adjective sharpens the jab. Used of a person, the word reads as a deliberate figure of speech, so it suits arch or satirical writing better than plain description.
Practice
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Origin
From Medieval Latin refrīgerātor, meaning "cooler."