refrigerant

plural refrigerants

1. A substance used in a heat cycle that undergoes a phase change between gas and liquid to allow the cooling, as in refrigerators, air conditioners, etc.
2. That which makes cool or cold, such as a medicine for allaying the symptoms of fever.

   […] taking a blue and white soda-powder, [she] mingled the same in water, and encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific for seasickness, but it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a mockery, and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my despondent heart.

   1869, Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Cinders from the Ashes”, in Pages from an Old Volume of Life, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, published 1883, page 245

   1 more example

   1783, Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Dublin: Whitestone et al., Volume 2, Lecture 32, p. 403, […] never give warning that you are about to be pathetic; and call upon your hearers, as is sometimes done, to follow you in the attempt. This almost never fails to prove a refrigerant to passion.

comparative more refrigerant · superlative most refrigerant

1. obsoleteThat cools or freezes; providing relief from heat or fever.

   [He] is robust and can safely take refrigerant food.

   1883, Adele Marion Fielde, “兩 (líang)”, in A pronouncing and defining dictionary of the Swatow dialect, arranged according to syllables and tones, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, page 350

   3 more examples

   1627, Francis Bacon, Sylua Syluarum: or A Naturall Historie in Ten Centuries, London: William Lee, VIII. Century, p. 204, This Experiment may be transferred vnto the Cure of Gangrenes, either Comming of themselues, or induced by too much Applying of Opiates: Wherein you must beware of Dry Heat, and resort to Things that are Refrigerant, with an Inward Warmth, and Vertue of Cherishing.

   Here on a bank, refrigerant seat, Screen’d from the Sun’s o’ercoming heat, Some stretch’d at ease the hours employ, In Bacchus’s unbounded joy,

   1788, John Hawkesworth, “Laudes Dargelli, or, Verses on the Dargle”, in The Poetical Works of John Hawkesworth, Dublin, page 25

   1859, Richard Francis Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 29, Chapter 2, pp. 54-55, They employ the coco-nut extensively; […] This immoderate use of the fruit is, according to the people, far from wholesome: it is considered, by its refrigerant properties, to cause rheumatic pains […]