GLACIER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does glacier mean? 

• GLACIER (noun)
  The noun GLACIER has 1 sense:

1. a slowly moving mass of ice

  Familiarity information: GLACIER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GLACIER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A slowly moving mass of ice

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("glacier" is a kind of...):

ice mass (a large mass of ice)

Meronyms (parts of "glacier"):

icefall (a steep part of a glacier resembling a frozen waterfall)

moraine (accumulated earth and stones deposited by a glacier)

neve (the upper part of a glacier (beyond the limit of perpetual snow) where the snow turns to ice)

Meronyms (substance of "glacier"):

ice; water ice (water frozen in the solid state)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "glacier"):

Alpine glacier; Alpine type of glacier (a glacier that moves down from a high valley)

continental glacier (a glacier that spreads out from a central mass of ice)

Piedmont glacier; Piedmont type of glacier (a type of glaciation characteristic of Alaska; large valley glaciers meet to form an almost stagnant sheet of ice)

Derivation:

glacial (relating to or derived from a glacier)

glaciate (become frozen and covered with glaciers)

glaciate (cover with ice or snow or a glacier)

 Context examples 

Till carried at or deposited from the under surface of a glacier.

(Basal sediments, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

In the few locations where glaciers have been stable or thickening rather than thinning, the study found that flow speeds also have been increasing slightly.

(NASA Finds Asian Glaciers Slowed by Ice Loss, NASA)

Its three major tributary glaciers are fed by their own tributaries farther inland.

(Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act, NASA)

The brown streaks on the glaciers are lateral and medial moraines.

(Retreat of Yakutat Glacier, NASA)

I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Large boulders displaced from their natural geologic location by glaciers.

(Erratics, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

A record of climatic events found by examining the natural environment (tree rings, coral growth bands, layers of ice in glaciers).

(Natural climate record, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

A wind-deposited sediment consisting mostly of silt, the silt commonly derived from finely ground rock washed out of continental glaciers.

(Loess, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

More than 90 percent of our planet’s freshwater ice is bound in the massive ice sheets and glaciers of the Antarctic and Greenland.

(The Hidden Meltdown of Greenland, NASA)

Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)