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Glite Dictionary
to churn ice cream

to churn ice cream

1 3.5
To mix and freeze a sweet creamy mixture by stirring it without stopping
  • phrasal verb
  • /tʃɜrn aɪs krim/
translation icon : batir helado
  • churn in the ice cream maker

Examples

  • You do need an ice cream maker to properly churn the ice cream.

    Blog text (12)

  • (I use a $399 ice cream maker because I churn a lot of ice cream, but most people would get along fine with the $49 model.)

    Blog text (34)

  • She remembered evenings when they churned ice cream on the balcony, and he teased her mother, pinching her playfully on the rear.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • You do need an ice cream maker to properly churn the ice cream.

  • You should churn the ice cream according to the ice cream maker's instructions.

  • Most frozen desserts are made by churning liquid in an ice cream maker.

How Vigorous

to churn ice cream
1 3.5
to whip
153 2.4
to beat
156 1.0
to stir
152 1.0
to mix
416 1.0

Surface Forms

churn ice cream infinitive
churned ice cream past
churned ice cream past participle
churning ice cream present participle
churns ice cream third person singular

Morphology

churn + ice + cream

The meaning is directly compositional: 'churn' (to stir cream vigorously) applied to 'ice cream' yields the literal action of making ice cream by stirring/freezing. This is a straightforward, cross-linguistically common cooking/action construction, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can derive the meaning.

Etymology

Churn ice cream comes from a simple kitchen image: people would turn a handle to stir cream in a wooden container until it froze into ice cream, so churn ice cream means 'to mix and freeze a sweet creamy mixture'.