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 Boy Who Dared
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The Subtle Knife
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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.
Every collision removes some of the energy supplied by the wind and reduces how far a floe can travel before it strikes another piece of ice.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
Ms Homendy said recovery workers were dealing with deteriorating weather conditions and that the wreckage had landed on an ice floe which is moving at a rate of five miles a day.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2025
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
An ice floe detached from the shoreline of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County, Minnesota, Friday, stranding the 122 ice fishermen on top of it.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 30, 2023
Then, during the early morning hours of March 28, their floe split in half.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
