refrigeration

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of refrigerating or cooling; the abatement of heat; the state of being cooled.
• noun Specifically The operation of cooling various substances by artificial processes.
• noun In a broader sense, a process of refrigeration in which the cycle of heat-changes is only partly produced by mechanical action, as in compression ice-machines using anhydrous ammonia, wherein the cooling of the vapor takes place entirely during the formation from the liquid, and is caused by absorption of the latent heat of vaporization from the sensible heat of the substance, the mechanical part of the process being wholly confined to compressing the ammonia-vapor while liquefying it under the action of cold and pressure. Such machines are the most effective and the most extensively used.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act or process of refrigerating or cooling, or the state of being cooled.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The process of transferring heat from an object in order to cool it.
• noun The process of preserving something by cooling.
• noun medicine The cooling of the body for therapeutic purposes.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the process of cooling or freezing (e.g., food) for preservative purposes
• noun deliberately lowering the body's temperature for therapeutic purposes