congeal

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English congelen, also conjealen,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French congeler (“to freeze, thicken”),^[3][4][5][6] with the third person singular present congèle.^[3] Anglo-Norman records it from the first third of the 14th century.^[7] The Middle English Dictionary and Dictionary.com give the Latin word as a source as well,^[2][8] and that word, the source of the French verb, is Latin congelō (“to cause to freeze, freeze together”),^[3][4] from com- (“together”) and gelō (“to freeze”),^[4][5][9] from gelū (“frost, ice”),^[4][6][10] from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“cold; to freeze”).^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To make solid or crystalline from a fluid state, as by freezing: about 1384, in Chaucer's House of Fame,^[3] which Barnhart dates about 1380.^[6] Benson's concordance lists one use each in Chaucer and Gower, both as the participle congeled.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb meant to freeze together.^[4] Chaucer's use was already about solidifying in general, and Gower has the literal sense of turning a fluid to ice by frost in 1393.^[3] About 1400 the verb was applied to liquids stiffening into a jelly-like state, especially blood and milk,^[3][2] and also became intransitive.^[3] The figurative use follows in 1561,^[3] and both Johnson and the Shorter Oxford quote Shakespeare's "Too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood".^[10][12] Solidifying by cooling without frost is recorded from 1682.^[3] Johnson (1755) still defined the verb first by frost,^[12] and modern dictionaries add an abstract use for ideas or systems becoming fixed.^[13][9]

Timeline

• c. 1384 – to solidify from a fluid state, in Chaucer (obsolete by 1727).^[3]
• 1393 – to freeze a fluid into a solid, in Gower.^[3]
• c. 1400 – to make a liquid viscid; to clot or curdle, especially of blood.^[3]
• c. 1400 – intransitive, to freeze or become solid, in Mandeville's Travels.^[3]
• 1561 – figurative, in Norton's translation of Calvin.^[3]
• 1682 – to solidify by cooling, not by frost, in Grew.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To change from a soft or fluid state to a firm or solid one, especially by cooling or freezing: The fat congealed on the cold plate.^[9][13][3]
2. To make or become thick and jelly-like; to coagulate, clot or curdle: The gravy congealed in the pan as it cooled.^[9][13][3]
3. Of ideas, to take shape or become fixed.^[9]
4. To make rigid or inflexible; to fix in a pattern or system: Habit had congealed the club's customs into law.^[13]
5. (obsolete, 1384–1727) To make a liquid solid or crystalline.^[13][3][10]

Word family

• congealable
• congealer
• congealment
• congealability
• congealedness
• noncongealing
• uncongeal

Related words

• congelation
• cold
• gelid
• jelly

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster