Meaning & use
glacier
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Meanings
nouncountablespecialist
A huge, slow-flowing body of ice on land, formed from layers of snow that have compacted over many years.
Grammar: Countable noun: a glacier, many glaciers.
Patterns
- a glacier in somewhere
- the glacier melts
The glacier moves only a few inches each day.
Hikers crossed the glacier with ropes and ice axes.
Climate change is causing glaciers to shrink around the world.
nouncountablefigurative
Something that moves or changes extremely slowly, used figuratively.
Grammar: Often appears in comparisons: moving at a glacial pace.
Patterns
- move like a glacier
The bureaucracy moved like a glacier, taking months to reply.
Progress on the road project was a glacier of delays.
Her career advanced at the pace of a glacier.
Word forms
| plural | glaciers |
|---|
Common combinations
- retreating glacier
- A retreating glacier reveals old rocks beneath it.
- glacier melt
- Glacier melt feeds many rivers.
- glacier ice
- Glacier ice often looks blue.
- mountain glacier
- A mountain glacier hung above the valley.
- glacier national park
- They visited Glacier National Park in Montana.
Synonyms and how they differ
- ice sheet
- An ice sheet is a vast ice cover over a whole region, much larger than a glacier.
- ice field
- An ice field is a large area of ice that may feed several glaciers.
- iceberg
- An iceberg is a floating piece of ice broken off a glacier, not a flowing mass on land.
- icecap
- An icecap is a dome of ice covering highland, bigger than a typical glacier.
Word family
- glacial adjective
- relating to glaciers, or very slow or very cold
- glaciation noun
- the process of land being covered by ice
- glaciologist noun
- a scientist who studies glaciers
- glaciology noun
- the study of glaciers
Commonly confused: glacier or iceberg?
glacier vs iceberg
An iceberg floats in the sea after breaking off, while a glacier is a mass of ice on land.
Practice
A large mass of ice that slowly flows across land is called a ___.
Choose one answer.
A glacier is a slow river of ice on land. An iceberg floats at sea, a blizzard is a storm, and an avalanche is a sudden fall of snow.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “glacier”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.