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.
Critics argue that left the Fed with a blind spot, with policymakers unprepared for how stress at mortgage lenders would soon cast a deep freeze over the entire economy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 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
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
With much of the country in a deep freeze in the past month, plenty of people are likely thinking of getting away on a tropical vacation.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
He’d also taken the easy chair, the big television from the den and every single battery, flashlight and lightbulb in the house, as well as the contents of the deep freeze in the garage.
From "Lawn Boy Returns" by Gary Paulsen
But since 2019, the two nations have plunged into a diplomatic deep-freeze so profound that Madrid sent no official representative to the 2024 inauguration marking Sheinbaum’s ascension as Mexico’s first woman president.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2026
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
I guess, in some twisted crevice of my mind, I was thinking I could do a deep-freeze voodoo thing on them—you know, conjure a couple of cold tickets into another chance with the warm girl.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
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.
