Word.ws English Dictionary

freezing up

freezing up is the present participle and gerund of freeze up.

Meaning of freeze up

Verb

freeze up (third-person singular simple present freezes up, present participle freezing up, simple past froze up, past participle frozen up)

  1. To be adversely affected by ice, and not function.
    • But these precautions lost some of their merit when the L.T. trains themselves became frozen up at depots overnight.1962 March, “Lessons of the Freeze-up”, in Modern Railways, page 146
  2. (ambitransitive) (of machines and software) To come or bring to a sudden halt, stop working (functioning).
    • Since the last update, the program freezes up after a few minutes of use.
  3. (ambitransitive) (of people and other animals) To stop or be stopped due to attentiveness, fear, surprise, etc.
    • Despite all of the rehearsals, as soon as I got on stage I froze up.
  4. (intransitive) To become cold and formal in demeanour.

Questions about freezing up

What is freezing up the present participle and gerund of?
Freezing up is the present participle and gerund of freeze up.

Words near freezing up in the dictionary

  1. freezing over
  2. freezing point
  3. freezing points
  4. freezing rain
  5. freezing to
  6. freezing up
  7. freezing worker
  8. freezing workers
  9. freezing works
  10. freezing-point depression
  11. freezing-point depressions

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: freezing up (page history and authors); freeze up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “freezing up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/freezing_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.