ice chest
5
1.7
- noun
- /aɪs tʃɛst/
- US
:
nevera
- Before heading to the beach, we packed the ice chest with sandwiches and drinks.
- fill an ice chest
- sodas in the ice chest
- Pack an ice chest
Examples
-
On the riverbank were sleeping bags and a red plastic ice chest.
Fiction book (2001) -
Please keep the drinks cool in the ice chest during the picnic.
-
Open up that ice chest.
-
But first help me load up another ice chest.
-
Johnson tags and places each in the ice chest.
Fiction book (1993) -
Finally, he removed a blue-and-white ice chest and put that in the back as well.
Fiction book (1992) -
And the highlight of the gig was sitting with George went outside of his trailer with an ice chest full of cold beer.
-
Look out, Jimmy, while you're at it, get the ice chest, okay?
-
Once everything is packed in the car, kids, ice chest, hot-dog buns, you leave the park.
Fiction book (1998) -
We put our catches in the big ice chest, where they flopped around and banged against the sides for a while.
Fiction book (2000)
Synonyms
20
7.9
A container that keeps food cold using blocks of ice without power
14
2.0
A box or small machine that keeps food and drinks cold
How Cold
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a container for keeping food and drinks cold' is directly derivable from combining 'ice' (frozen water) with 'chest' (a box/container): it denotes a chest that holds or is associated with ice to keep things cool. This simple noun–noun compounding pattern is common cross-linguistically and would be clear to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Ice chest comes from the simple image of a box filled with ice, because people kept big blocks of ice in a wooden chest to hold and cool food and drinks. So today ice chest means a portable container used 'to keep food and drinks cool'.