I decided to pop over to the OEDILF, where I haven't been for a while now, and write a couple of limericks for them. In the word list I found "dethaw" which is listed in about half a dozen One-look sources as an informal synonym for "thaw". Shouldn't it mean "freeze"?

Thertainly not. A dethaw ith what kidth go up and down on in the playground.

Maybe it should mean "freeze", but it doesn't. It's the same process of affixal intensification we find in debone, unravel and irradiate.

I know. It's just one I hadn't really heard before.

A colloquialsim, now almost extinct around here, "silver thaw," meant the opposite of thaw. It referred to an ice storm.

I suspect that unconsciously people associated de- with undoing something and see "freezing" as something being done and "thawing" as something being undone so that de- must be associated with the negative act. Hence dethaw must be the same as unfreeze, even though they should be logical opposites.

I can't ever recall coming across dethaw. The word I've always seen on packets of food intended for the freezer and so on is defrost.

quote:

food intended for the freezer and so on is defrost.

Isn't that a movie? DeFrost-DeNixon?

z has mentioned the word dethaw here before. Apparently there is an unthaw, too.

Welcome back from S.A., Kalleh!

WM