a state or period of halted or suspended activity or progress.
High interest rates created a deep freeze in housing construction.
suspended animation.
to quick-freeze (food).
to store in a frozen state.
An Americanism dating back to 1940–45
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Relations remain in deep freeze," former Pakistani diplomat, Husain Haqqani, now a senior fellow at Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy and Hudson Institute, told the BBC.
From BBC ● May 7, 2026
Car sales got a boost after deep freeze across much of the country ended and customers were able to get to showrooms.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 9, 2026
Davenport expects the deep freeze to be extended given the labor market has deteriorated, trade policy and geopolitical uncertainty are elevated and Canada’s population is shrinking.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026
But as the digital-asset realm evolves, the real deep freeze would be if there were an extended drop in the value of stablecoins in circulation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
I tried the number again while the obliging proprietor dug up his two coldest ones from the bottom of the deep freeze.
From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez
The committed band of Minneapolis residents organized spontaneously, defying the deep-freeze conditions to confront the operation that has ensnared longtime city residents.
From Barron's ● Jan. 28, 2026
This deep-freeze haven for comets is believed to stretch more than one-quarter of the way to the next star.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 27, 2023
The deep-freeze will be particularly dangerous for the homeless.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 20, 2022
Devolution remained in the deep-freeze for three years.
From BBC ● Mar. 11, 2022
Within a few weeks the deep-freeze facilities of the institute were taxed to capacity, so that other specimens had to be refused.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
The researchers took weekly blood samples but did not find the culprit; so they deep-froze the samples and stored them.
From Time Magazine Archive
On land, permafrost melting and collapsing Arctic coastlines are dramatically altering ecological interactions and biogeochemistry due to the release of millennia-old carbon stores, trace elements, nutrients and potentially even deep-frozen ancient viruses and pathogenic bacteria.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 20, 2023
Until recently, the site had been deep-frozen in the subsoil known as permafrost.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2021
The Popeyes turkey I picked up last Wednesday night was a plastic-wrapped, deep-frozen behemoth that, I was informed, would take a full four days to defrost.
From Slate ● Nov. 21, 2018
He has also signed up with cryogenics company Alcor to be deep-frozen at the time of his death in the hope that he too can be resurrected.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 30, 2017
“How far is that man going to sail? If we go on like this, we’ll soon be in Burano and as stiff as deep-frozen chickens.”
From "The Thief Lord" by Cornelia Funke
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
