WTN: infrigorating
James Harbeck
infrigorating
I was in a warm place last week, visiting friends who have an outdoor pool. It has a heater that can be turned on. The first time we got into the pool, the heater hadn’t been turned on for a while, and what is a nice air temperature is not necessarily as warm when it’s water. I jumped in and proclaimed it infrigorating.
And then, a couple of days ago, I got back to Toronto, where – in my absence – autumn had seceded to winter, and I remembered what’s really infrigorating.
Infrigorating? Is that a word?
Well, it should be. When you jump into a cool pool or step out in warm-weather clothing into freezing air, you may want to declare pertly that it’s invigorating, but you may also want to shout “Frig! It’s a bit brisk!” And frigor is a Latin word meaning ‘cold’, and frigorific is a word – meaning not ‘terrifically frigging cold’, but ‘causing to chill or cool’.
But we do already have an established Latinate word for the sense to which infrigorating is a pretender: infrigidating. It’s clear, it makes sense, it provides a nice match to intepidating (which is not in use as a word but sure could be) and more loosely to infuriating, and it has overtones of going out on a frigid date. And its root frigido is (aside from sounding like a perpetually chilly hobbit or supervillain, perhaps) Latin for ‘I chill, I make cool’ – literally, not as in hanging with the gang.
But, well, heck. Might as well just say chilly as infrigidating. I think infrigorating has a feel I like better, for reasons given above. If I’m going to have to experience the cold shock, I want a word for it that sounds more like what I’m muttering under my breath as steam comes out of my mouth.
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