congeal
/kənˈdʒiːl
/- John got up and began rummaging through the refrigerator, eventually seizing on a plate plied with pizza slices congealed into an amorphous lump that resembled a failed lasagna.
- Although overall it was linear and limber, in places it congealed into colorful clots.
- Another possibility, he speculated, was that lubricant has congealed into a buttery texture, preventing it from being evenly spread among the gear's moving parts.
Synonyms
- Yet somehow the film's parts never quite congeal into a satisfying whole.
- In other words, his life, which was open to infinite possibility, congeals into the closed shape of a Destiny.
- Knowing that the book is devoted to obscenity, the viewer strives to make these recalcitrant shapes congeal into something naughty.
Derivatives
congealable
/ adjective ...- The microspheres were prepared by a modified hydrophobic congealable disperse-phase method.
- Designed as a first stage pre-filter for mist and congealable contaminants we manufacture a variety of high efficiency, chevron style impingers.
- This invention relates to dump tanks and has particular reference to emergency dump tanks for the retention of congealable materials.
congealment
/ noun (archaic) ...- (If I had guts, I would've eaten one of those hot dogs with dodgy looking congealments on them).
- An example here is their President, who denounces the ways in which certain patterns of thought led to the congealment of an impersonal ‘juggernaut of power’ in the form of authoritarian states.
- While she is away, he wonders if the congealment of his blood is a sign that he should not continue.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Old French congeler, from Latin congelare, from con- 'together' + gelare 'freeze' (from gelu 'frost').
cold from Old English:
Cold goes back to an ancient root that was shared by Latin gelu ‘frost’, the root of congeal (Late Middle English), jelly, and cool. It appears in many common expressions, a number of which refer to parts of the body. If someone gives you the cold shoulder they are deliberately unfriendly. It is unlikely to be from ‘a cold shoulder of mutton’, for an unappetizing meal served to an unwelcome guest as is often claimed, but rather from a dismissive gesture of the body, involving a jerk or shrug of the shoulder. Cold-hearted first appeared in Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra. The proverb cold hands, warm heart is much more recent: the earliest example is from the late 19th century.
The origin of cold comfort, meaning ‘poor or inadequate consolation’, is the idea that charity is often given in a cold or uncaring way. To go cold turkey is suddenly to give up taking a drug that you are addicted to, which can be an unpleasant process involving bouts of shivering and sweating that cause goose pimples reminiscent of the flesh of a dead plucked turkey. The expression dates from the 1920s. The Cold War was the state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet countries and Western powers from 1945 to 1990 although the term has been recorded from the beginning of the Second World War.