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thaw
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
thaw
I.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
out
▪ That night it freezes hard and next morning after a brief breakfast we thaw out the boat and set off again.
▪ And his new overcoat was thawed out and limp now.
▪ He was brought in touch with reality, he was thawed out.
▪ The veal in the clingfilm had now thawed out so he consigned it to the wastebasket.
▪ What if she thawed out and is planning to garrotte Matthew Kelly with one of his own sparkly waistcoats?
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ As the Cold War thawed, defense budgets shrank.
▪ Put the chicken in the microwave to thaw it out.
▪ The lake is frozen all winter, but it usually thaws in March.
▪ The snow had started to thaw, and there was a faint scent of spring in the air.
▪ When the lakes start to thaw, it's dangerous to go skating.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ He rubbed one in his hands to thaw it for me and barked at Nina, the black-haired girl.
▪ I suggest wiring them up and trailing them overboard to thaw.
▪ It made her thaw a fraction towards him, in spite of herself.
▪ That night it freezes hard and next morning after a brief breakfast we thaw out the boat and set off again.
II.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
spring
▪ The tops of the wedges are often covered with gravel and may be awash during the spring thaw.
▪ Freezing at night, baking during the day, ice storms after spring thaw, all create a rugged habitat.
▪ Usually dry throughout winter, they start with the onset of spring thaw.
▪ It remained in place for a record seventy-eight days until April 11, when the spring thaw finally caused its breakup.
▪ Surprisingly, before the spring thaw finally sets in, April can provide excellent rock climbing.
▪ Vlasov's army was once again surrounded between Novgorod and Gruzino; and the spring thaw turned the forest into a swamp.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ the thaw in East-West tensions
▪ the spring thaw
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Brief thaws came often, but Provincetown seemed, in general, arctic and bereft.
▪ For a while, until the thaw or rain, these muddy tracks will be fossilised and time will stand still.
▪ Freezing at night, baking during the day, ice storms after spring thaw, all create a rugged habitat.
▪ In many places the thaw was complete, and he trudged through mud.
▪ Perhaps it was to exploit this slight sign of thaw that Eisenhower immediately afterwards invited Khrushchev to the United States.
▪ Rocks splintered by centuries of cyclic thaws crumbled under my boots.
▪ Yet the outburst of modernism which occurred in the thaw years, did not spring from a total void.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
thaw

thaw \thaw\, n. The melting of ice, snow, or other congealed matter; the resolution of ice, or the like, into the state of a fluid; liquefaction by heat of anything congealed by frost; also, a warmth of weather sufficient to melt that which is congealed.
--Dryden.

thaw

thaw \thaw\ (th[add]), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Thawed (th[add]d); p. pr. & vb. n. Thawing.] [AS. [thorn][=a]wian, [thorn][=a]wan; akin to D. dovijen, G. tauen, thauen (cf. also verdauen to digest, OHG. douwen, firdouwen), Icel. [thorn]eyja, Sw. t["o]a, Dan. t["o]e, and perhaps to Gr. th`kein to melt. [root]56.]

  1. To melt, dissolve, or become fluid; to soften; -- said of that which is frozen; as, the ice thaws.

  2. To become so warm as to melt ice and snow; -- said in reference to the weather, and used impersonally.

  3. Fig.: To grow gentle or genial. Compare cold[4], a. and hard[6], a.

thaw

thaw \thaw\, v. t. To cause (frozen things, as earth, snow, ice) to melt, soften, or dissolve.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
thaw

"the melting of ice or snow," also "spell of weather causing this," c.1400, from thaw (v.). Figurative sense is from 1590s; specifically "relaxation of political harshness or hostility" from 1950, an image from the "Cold War."

thaw

Old English þawian (transitive), from Proto-Germanic *thawon- (cognates: Old Norse þeyja, Middle Low German doien, Dutch dooien, Old High German douwen, German tauen "to thaw"), from PIE root *ta- "to melt, dissolve" (cognates: Sanskrit toyam "water," Ossetic thayun "to thaw," Welsh tawadd "molten," Doric Greek takein "to melt, waste, be consumed," Old Irish tam "pestilence," Latin tabes "a melting, wasting away, putrefaction," Old Church Slavonic tajati "to melt"). Intransitive sense from early 14c. Related: Thawed; thawing.

Wiktionary
thaw

n. 1 The melting of ice, snow, or other congealed matter; the resolution of ice, or the like, into the state of a fluid; liquefaction by heat of anything congealed by frost 2 a warmth of weather sufficient to melt that which is congealed. —http://en.wikipedi

  1. org/wiki/Dryden. v

  2. 1 (context intransitive English) To melt, dissolve, or become fluid; to soften; — said of that which is frozen; as, the ice thaws. Specifically by gradual warming 2 (context intransitive English) To become so warm as to melt ice and snow; — said in reference to the weather, and used impersonally. 3 (context intransitive figuratively English) To grow gentle or genial. 4 (context transitive English) To cause frozen things (such as earth, snow, ice) to melt, soften, or dissolve. Specifically by gradual warming.

Related phrases:
WordNet
thaw

  1. n. the process whereby heat changes something from a solid to a liquid; "the power failure caused a refrigerator melt that was a disaster"; "the thawing of a frozen turkey takes several hours" [syn: melt, thawing, melting]

  2. warm weather following a freeze; snow and ice melt; "they welcomed the spring thaw" [syn: thawing, warming]

  3. a relaxation or slackening of tensions or reserve; becoming less hostile; "the thaw between the United States and Russia has led to increased cooperation in world affairs"

  4. v. become or cause to become soft or liquid; "The sun melted the ice"; "the ice thawed"; "the ice cream melted"; "The heat melted the wax"; "The giant iceberg dissolved over the years during the global warming phase"; "dethaw the meat" [syn: dissolve, unfreeze, unthaw, dethaw, melt]

Wikipedia
Thaw

Thaw or THAW may refer to:

Thaw (album)

Thaw is a Foetus Interruptus album released by Self Immolation/ Some Bizzare in September 1988 and also released on Some Bizzare 1995, by Thirsty Ear. The track "English Faggot/Nothin Man" was inspired by a harassing message Thirlwell received on his answering machine.

Thaw (Buckethead album)

Thaw or also known as Pike 20 is the fiftieth studio album by guitarist Buckethead, and the twentieth installment of the Buckethead Pikes Series.

The album was announced on July 2 simultaneously along with the previous installment, Teeter Slaughter as a limited edition, untitled album with hand drawn covers and signed by Buckethead himself. The album was expected to be released on July 30, however delays pushed the release date to August 5. On July 17, 2014 the album was released digitally which included the official album title, cover, and track names.

A standard edition was also announced but has not yet been released.

Thaw (weather)

January thaw is a term applied to a thaw or rise in temperature in mid-winter found in mid- latitude North America.

Sinusoidal estimates of expected temperatures, for northern locales, usually place the lowest temperatures around January 23 and the highest around July 24, and provide fairly accurate estimates of temperature expectations. Actual average temperatures in North America usually significantly differ twice over the course of the year:

  • Mid-autumn temperatures tend to be warmer than predicted by the sinusoidal model, creating the impression of extended summer warmth known as Indian summer.
  • For five days around January 25, temperatures are usually significantly warmer than predicted by the sinusoidal estimate, and also warmer than neighboring temperatures on both sides.

During this "thaw" period, usually lasting for about a week, temperatures are generally about 6 °C (10 °F) above normal. This varies from year to year, and temperatures fluctuate enough that such a rise in late-January temperature would be unremarkable; what is remarkable (and unexplained) is the tendency for such rises to occur more commonly in late January than in mid-January or early February, which sinusoidal estimates have to be slightly warmer.

In some regions (such as northern Canada) this phenomenon will not be manifest as a "thaw" in the technical sense, since temperatures will remain below freezing.

The January thaw is believed to be a weather singularity. A possible physical mechanism for such phenomena was offered in the 1950s by E.G. Bowen: he suggested that some "calendaricities" (as he called them) might be explicable in terms of meteoric particles from cometary orbits acting as ice nuclei in terrestrial clouds; his theory then received some support from several sources. However, Bowen’s ideas later fell out of favour with the development of atmospheric dynamic modelling techniques, although one of his rainfall peaks does seem to correspond with the date of the January thaw.

Data analysis has not found statistically significant support for the supposed January thaw. The authors of this study state that "the effects of sampling in finite climate records are wholly adequate to account for the existence of January thaw 'features' in northeastern U.S. temperature data."

Usage examples of "thaw".

Under the terms of the Mutual Use Treaty, which had been hammered out during that momentary thaw in relations between England and the Celtic Federation, every settler on Mars had received an Allotment of acreage for private terraforming.

For the meat eaters, a number of giant baloneys were set to roasting whole on spits, to be turned and attentively basted with a grape-jelly glaze by once-quarrelsome kitchen staff while others made croutons from old bread, bustling about while the spinach thawed, singing along with the radio, which someone had mercifully re-tuned to a rock and roll station.

It was thawing a little, as if Bradley had completed the job of sizing Bannerman up and had decided that he would prefer to talk with him rather than seem to have any contact with Maritta.

Snow placed in the hot chamber melts, and when the resulting water boils a musher can use it to drink, feed his dogs, fill his trail thermos, and thaw prepared, vacuum-sealed frozen meals.

And yet, how many of us have at this very moment a peau de chagrin of our own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and incapable, like the magical one of the story, of being arrested in its progress Need I say that I refer to those coupon bonds, issued in the days of eight and ten per cent interest, and gradually narrowing as they drop their semiannual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be realized, as the roses let fall their leaves in July, as the icicles melt away in the thaw of January?

Maybe, somehow, after my wife and I had fallen asleep, I would awake and taking just my coat and whatever tools were needed, would cross over the Pennines, down into those Yorkshire towns, do my deeds and be back in bed asleep beside my wife before dawn thawed the frost from the cracked window pane.

And Norris is afraid that we may release a plaguesome germ disease unknown to Earthif we thaw those microscopic things that have been frozen there for twenty million years.

But something must have been wrong with the radionic oven that had thawed and heated it, for at the first bite I crunched a kernel of ice in the meat.

The redoubt had been built on a groundsill of rubble and timber to keep it raised above the frozen tundra and protected from sinkage during spring thaw.

When the thaw came, the burn wrought a passage for itself below the snaw, but the arch stood till summer.

He tore out the timing mechanisms from the thawer and went to lock them in a safe place.

I agree that there is going to be no thawing of this thing if there is the remotest chance of its revival.

From my observations while it was thawing out, and the bits of tissue I cut and hardened then, I think it was native to a hotter planet than Earth.

We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a waterwheel.

The floes were small and broken - the thawing fringe broken from the pack ice farther south and flung north-eastward by the storm.