Freeze, subs. (colloquial).—1. The act or state of freezing; a frost.
2. (old).—Hard cider.—Grose.
Verb. (American).—1. To long for intensely; e.g., ‘to freeze to go back,’ said of the home-sick; ‘to freeze for meat.’
1848. Ruxton, Life in the Far West (1887), p. 129. Threats of vengeance on every Redskin they met were loud and deep; and the wild war songs round their nightly camp-fires, and grotesque scalp-dances, borrowed from the Indians, proved to the initiated that they were, one and all, half-froze for hair.
2. (thieves’).—Hence, to appropriate; to steal; ‘to stick to.’
3. (old).—To adulterate or balderdash (q.v.) wine with freeze (q.v. sense 2).—Grose.
To freeze to (or on to), verb. phr. (American).—To take a strong fancy to; to cling to; to, keep fast hold of; and (of persons) to button-hole or shadow.
1883. Graphic, 17 March, p. 287, col. 1. If there was one institution which the Anglo-Indian froze to more than another, it was his sit-down supper and—its consequences.
1888. Daily Inter-Ocean, 2 March. The competence of a juror was judged by his ability to shake ready-formed opinions and freeze on to new ones.
To Freeze Out, verb. phr. (American).—To compel to withdraw from society by cold and contemptuous treatment; from business by competition or opposition; from the market by depressing prices or rates of exchange.