on ice
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
postponed or suspended temporarily
Literally: frozen water
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
City: Deals ‘ put on ice’ set to appear
But Crosby's move for Wilson has been put on ice while Southampton dither over whether to come back in for Armstrong after having a £750,000 bid rejected.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “on ice” mean?
postponed or suspended temporarily Literally: frozen water
Is “on ice” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.