ice sheet

noun

1. a broad, thick sheet of ice covering an extensive area for a long period of time.
2. a glacier covering a large fraction of a continent.

ice sheet

noun

1. a thick layer of ice covering a large area of land for a long time, esp those in Antarctica and Greenland

Word History and Origins

Origin of ice sheet¹

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

Wilmot’s slopes are glacial sediment deposited about 18,000 to 15,000 years ago when two lobes of the massive ice sheet that covered much of Canada and the northern United States collided.

From Washington Post

You can even use this trick to burn a fire out on an ice sheet, though it’s hazardous.

From Popular-Science

To understand how water could have persisted in this chilly environment, Ojha and his colleagues estimated whether heat from the planet’s interior could have melted the base of ice sheets in the planet’s southern highlands.

From Popular-Science

As our climate warms, the planet’s ice sheets are vanishing faster than anyone expected, pouring meltwater into rising seas.

From Nautilus

This makes the ice sheets susceptible to both warmer ocean water and sea level rise.

From Science News

The warmer Arctic has dramatically accelerated the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

From The Daily Beast

The ice sheet, which was in time to bury half of Europe under its chilly mantle, had begun its slow movement toward the south.

From Project Gutenberg

From the ship's deck, even when within a mile, the outcrop had appeared to project directly from under the inland ice-sheet.

From Project Gutenberg

The sunset was a picture of prismatic colours reflected over the undulating ice-sheet and the tumbling cascades of the glacier.

From Project Gutenberg

The ice sheet did not come further south than the Thames valley.

From Project Gutenberg

The existence of the ice-sheet has been conjured up in order to explain the presence of the boulder-clay.

From Project Gutenberg