floe
Americannoun
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Also called ice floe. a sheet of floating ice, chiefly on the surface of the sea, smaller than an ice field.
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a detached floating portion of such a sheet.
noun
Etymology
Origin of floe
First recorded in 1810–20; perhaps from Norwegian flo “layer” (compare Old Norse flō “layer, level”); cognate with Old English flōh “piece, flagstone”; cf. flaw 1
Explanation
An ice floe is a large, free-floating, flat chunk of ice floating in the ocean. Beware: if you're at the North Pole, you could get stranded on an ice floe along with polar bears and other arctic creatures. A floe can vary in size from small to giant, but they differ from icebergs in their relative lack of depth. When you spot an iceberg, it’s often just the tip of what’s there, but with a floe, what you see is what you get. The floe edge is where the ice that is still attached to the land, having frozen over the winter months, meets the sea. When the floe edge fractures, the ice floe floats out to sea.
Vocabulary lists containing floe
The Subtle Knife
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The Boy Who Dared
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for February 5–February 11, 2022
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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.
“She told herself, ‘Oh, just put me on an ice floe —’”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
Members of the public alerted the local authorities when they saw a man going onto an ice floe to approach the animal.
From BBC ● Apr. 27, 2024
In late December, more than 100 people had to be rescued from an ice floe that broke free from a fishing area on a northern Minnesota lake.
From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
The rescues failed, and four people fell into the water before being taken back to the floe to warm up in a shelter, the sheriff’s office wrote.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 30, 2023
She appeared on his ice floe like the sun.
From "Breadcrumbs" by Anne Ursu
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.
