the.com/thaw
the slow surrender of ice that ends wars, ankles, and frozen leftovers alike
means To melt from a frozen state, or to warm and soften — whether literally turning ice to water or figuratively easing tension between people.
from From Old English thawian, 'to melt,' tracing back to a Proto-Germanic root (cousin to Dutch dooien and German tauen) and likely further to a Proto-Indo-European base meaning 'to dissolve or melt away.' The figurative thaw — of moods, of relations between nations — is a much later flowering of the same simple image: hard things going soft as the cold lets go.
- diplomacy
- Cold War easing was literally named a thaw
- frostbite cruelty
- rewarming damaged tissue hurts worse than freezing it
- permafrost bomb
- thawing arctic soil releases ancient trapped methane
- food danger
- bacteria reawaken fast on thawing meat surfaces
- woolly returns
- melting permafrost keeps coughing up intact mammoths
siberian permafrost thaw — releases methane and co2 across russia and alaska, accelerating 4x since 2000
greenland ice sheet thaw — melts ~280 billion tons annually, raising sea levels measurably each year
operation barbarossa thaw — spring 1941 mud halted nazi advance into soviet union, killing momentum of invasion