Here is something that occurred to me the other day. The preface "re" is used in many words. Recycle, Reuse, Recite, Re-post, Reprocessed, Reconstituted. "Re" means to do something again. So why do we call it a Refrigerator? Honestly. How often do we actually refrigerate items? To refrigerate something literally means to chill it again. How many items in our refrigerators do we allow to warm up to room temperature or hotter before we put them back in to chill down again?
When I take out my gallon of milk or carton of juice to pour a glass or use it to cook, it goes back in before it has a chance to heat up much meaning that I'm using my refrigerator to maintain a level of coldness. When I have leftover pizza or dinner, I put it in for the first time to be chilled... just once. When I cook something that needs to chilled before being served, I'm cooling the finished, cooked item for the first time... again once. Really there are only a few times when I am actually using my refrigerator to cool something down again. When chilled groceries come home after being in a hot car, when the reheated leftovers were a bit too much too eat and had to go back in. So really, why do we call it a refrigerator and not just a frigerator?
We don't call it a re-accelerator despite speeding up again and again while driving. We don't call it a re-on switch despite pushing it every time we need to turn our computers on. And we do these things much more often then we refrigerate items. I'm just saying...
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