ice-free
Americanadjective
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free of ice.
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(of a harbor or other body of water) free at all times of the year of any ice that would impede navigation.
Etymology
Origin of ice-free
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Noting that its waters are ice-free thanks to the Gulf Stream, the Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy has, for example, suggested excluding the Barents Sea from the EU's definition of the Arctic.
From Barron's ● Mar. 14, 2026
Only 20% of Greenland is ice-free, the Center for Strategic & International Studies said in a report published earlier this month.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
“It means that when these glaciers die off, we will be the first humans to see ice-free peaks in Yosemite,” said Andrew Jones, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the study.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2025
The decline is tied to the amount of time the bay is now ice-free, a period that is getting longer as the climate warms.
From BBC ● Dec. 17, 2024
And because these people lived seven thousand miles south of the Bering Strait, a distance that presumably would have taken a long time to traverse, they almost certainly arrived before the ice-free corridor opened up.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
