frieze

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɹiːz/
• Rhymes: -iːz
• Homophones: frees, freeze

Late Middle English, from French and Middle French frise, probably from Medieval Latin Frisia (“Frisian (wool)”) due to import via Northern ships. Or, from French friser (“to curl”).^[1].

frieze (countable and uncountable, plural friezes)

1. A kind of coarse woollen cloth or stuff with a shaggy or tufted (friezed) nap on one side.
   • 1608, [Thomas Dekker], “Of Barnards Law”, in The Belman of London. […], London: […] [Edward Allde and Nicholas Okes] for Nathaniel Butter, →OCLC, signature F, verso:

     [I]f a plaine fellow well and cleanely apparelled, either in home-ſpun ruſſet or freeze (as the ſeaſon requires) with a five pouch at his girdle, happen to appeare in his ruſticall likenes: there is a Cozen ſaies one, At which word out flies the Taker, and thus giues the onſet vpon my olde Pennyfather.

   • 1796, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Observing a Blossom on the First of February 1796:

     This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month […]

   • 1829, Charles Sprague, To My Cigar:

     From beggar's frieze to monarch's robe, / One common doom is pass'd; / Sweet nature's works, the swelling globe, / Must all burn out at last.

   • 1897, Arthur Conan Doyle, How the Governor of Saint Kitt's came Home:

     "You may shoot, or you may not," cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon the breast of his frieze jacket.

• freeze (obsolete)

frieze (third-person singular simple present friezes, present participle friezing, simple past and past participle friezed)

1. (transitive) To make a nap on (cloth); to friz.

From French and Middle French frise f, derived from an Upper Italian fris f, Medieval Latin frisum, frisium, frigium, frixum, frigium, of controversial origin, possibly from multiple sources, Arabic إِفْرِيز (ʔifrīz, “king beam, cornice”) and Latin opus Phrygium (“a kind of embroidery”, literally “work of Phrygia”), the demonym Frisian and terms related to the textile term above in a transferred sense.

frieze (plural friezes)

1. (architecture) That part of the entablature of an order which is between the architrave and cornice. It is a flat member or face, either uniform or broken by triglyphs, and often enriched with figures and other ornaments of sculpture.
2. Any sculptured or richly ornamented band in a building or, by extension, in rich pieces of furniture.
3. A banner with a series of pictures.

   The classroom had an alphabet frieze that showed an animal for each letter.

• frieze group

frieze (third-person singular simple present friezes, present participle friezing, simple past and past participle friezed)

1. (transitive, architecture) To put a frieze on.

From Old Frisian *friāsa, from Proto-West Germanic *freusan.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfriə̯zə/

frieze

1. to freeze

• “frieze”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011