thaw
part of speech
verb (thaw, thaws, thawed, thawing); noun (a thaw)
meaning for a pupil
1) To thaw is to melt: ice or snow thaws when it gets warmer. tree →
2) To thaw frozen food is to let it become soft and unfrozen before cooking. tree →
3) A thaw is a time of warmer weather when snow and ice melt. tree →
4) If a person or a relationship thaws, it becomes friendlier after being cold. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons on states of matter, thawing is melting: solid ice changes to liquid water above 0 °C. In cooking and food safety, frozen meat must be thawed in the fridge, not left out. In geography, the spring thaw makes rivers rise. In stories «she thawed a little» means she became friendlier. Phrases: «thaw out», «spring thaw», «defrost».
examples
- The Samaritans still to this day preserve a tradition allowing Resh to occur in both single and double forms, bearing a distinction comparable to the difference between the Spanish single r of pero and double rr of perro.] Taw-Thaw. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) tree →
- The snow began to thaw in March. tree →
- Thaw the chicken in the fridge overnight. tree →
- The ice on the pond thawed in the sun. tree →
- After the thaw, the river flooded. tree →
- My frozen fingers thawed out by the fire. tree →
- Ice thaws at 0 °C. tree →
- Their friendship slowly thawed. tree →
- The snow that lay upon it was partially thawed, and the stones crumbled beneath the feet. tree →
note
Past: thawed. «Thaw» is mostly used for ice, snow and frozen food; «melt» is wider (chocolate melts). Opposite: freeze. Safety: never walk on ice that is thawing. Rhymes with «saw».
In the corpora
- The North American wood frog can freeze solid in winter, with its heart stopped, and thaw and hop away in spring.
- Freezing does not kill most germs; they wake up again when the food thaws.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «thaw» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.