ice age

American  

[ahys eyj] / ˈaɪs ˌeɪdʒ /

noun

Geology.

1. a geologic period during which ice thickly covers vast masses of land.

   astronomical phenomena related to the widespread glaciation of ice ages.

2. Ice Age, the most recent of the earth’s many ice ages, occurring during the Pleistocene Epoch.

   Our familiar continents were shaped quite differently before the Ice Age.

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ice age British  

noun

1. another name for glacial period

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ice age Scientific  

1. Any of several cold periods during which glaciers covered much of the Earth.

2. Ice Age. The most recent glacial period, which occurred during the Pleistocene Epoch and ended about 10,000 years ago. During the Pleistocene Ice Age, great sheets of ice up to two miles thick covered most of Greenland, Canada, and the northern United States as well as northern Europe and Russia.

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Etymology

Origin of ice age

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

This area contains a series of long, shallow grooves set within a landscape of deep valleys, scattered impact craters, and surface textures that point to a distant ice age on the Red Planet.

From Science Daily

The glacier shed eight kilometers of ice in that short period, a pace comparable to the rapid withdrawals that marked the end of the last ice age.

From Science Daily

This revealed that, nearly 11,000 years ago, just after the last ice age, dog skulls started to change shape.

From BBC

"During the last ice age, there was almost no cosmic dust in the Arctic sediments," he said.

From Science Daily

In the 1970s, we were warned about a new ice age and in the 1980s of a nuclear winter.

From The Wall Street Journal