freezer
Americannoun
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freezers
plural
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a refrigerator, refrigerator compartment, cabinet, or room held at or below 32°F (0°C), used especially for preserving and storing food.
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a machine containing cold brine, ice, etc., for making ice cream, sherbet, or the like.
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a person or thing that freezes or chills.
noun
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Also called: deepfreeze. a device that freezes or chills, esp an insulated cold-storage cabinet for long-term storage of perishable foodstuffs
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a former name for refrigerator
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of freezer
Explanation
A freezer is an appliance that keeps food frozen at extremely low temperatures. A household freezer is usually built into a refrigerator. It's where you keep your ice cream and ice cubes. The freezer is where you keep ice cubes and frozen peas — it's a compartment at the top (or bottom) of the refrigerator in your kitchen. Larger freezers are used to keep enough food for a long period of time, or so a restaurant, hotel, or school cafeteria can store leftover food or keep enough to cook for a crowd of people. The word freezer was coined in 1847, although it originally meant part of an ice cream maker.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The burned waste at the site included several old mattresses, a fridge freezer, builders waste, car tyres, a cement mixer and wood panelling.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
But millions of pounds unrefrigerated food, mostly meat and seafood, remain in the western freezer, which was unaffected by the blaze.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
Bitzer said the company has been clear that the plan is to manufacture a single type of appliance at the plant: refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
The only dinner in that day’s haul had come from the freezer aisle.
From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2026
I returned to the chest freezer but there was no more ice, just a dozen bags of frozen vegetables, so I dumped them in.
From "Educated" by Tara Westover
It's a mammoth task: The vast majority of the city's 20,500 licensed food carts -- selling pretzels, peanuts and ice cream -- rely on generators to power stoves, freezers and ventilators.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
A recall was not requested because the products are no longer available to purchase, but officials are concerned that bags of the frozen nuggets could still be in consumers’ freezers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2026
A police escort transferred bodies to Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport on Friday morning for the repatriation to Iran, after they were stored in two freezers at Galle National Hospital.
From BBC ● Mar. 13, 2026
He said the company was adding more freezers in stores.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 11, 2026
I can see her in my mind’s eye—Nurse May- inga, the source of the virus in the United States Army’s freezers.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
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.
