Babs: 'Breadbox'? Refrigerator? The refrigerator does make cool again that which is becoming too warm but the true origin of the word is in
refrigerare. The Latin verb means simply 'to cool' and no play is or was made of the 're-' element that might suggest restitution , making cool again. It was used both literally and figuratively, so it could refer to a friendship or love cooling. The verb
frigerare did exist but is noted in Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary as " very rare". It means 'to refresh with coolness'. Better though is the word
refrigeratrix. This means 'she who makes cool' and the Dictionary gives but one example, which is from the historian and naturalist Pliny the Elder where he writes of "Nature the Cooler" (
natura refrigeratrix ). Classically sexist, Lewis and Short note the male form of this noun though they only deduce its existence and give no example of its use. Obviously, if there is the inferior female form then that must come from the superior male form
And the male form? It's
refrigerator.
Breadbox seems to be an American word. The English 'bread bin' is but an airtight container designed to stop the bread from drying and becoming stale. The predecessor of the refrigerator here was the meat safe. This was a room built on the north side of a house. It was ventilated by an aperture covered in gauze to stop flies from entering. We had one in a house built as late as 1952. Refrigerators back then were both bulky and of small capacity, big enough for regular joints of meat but not much else. Ours stayed in use for many years for hanging game in, something for which it was ideal. Controlled putrefaction was what it was best at !
Very grand houses had subterranean 'ice houses' in the grounds. Lined with brick these were kept cool all Summer by blocks of ice taken from the house's lake in Winter.
This is one of those pieces of nature trivia concerning confusing nomenclature. The best one for pub quizzes is the question of what seabird is called puffinus puffinus. That is not the puffin. It's the manx shearwater. That's because the first specimens sent for naming were thought to be puffins. Only later did the embarrassed naturalists find out that they'd been dissecting young shearwaters but by then the mistake was in print. 
