floe

[ floh ]
See synonyms for floe on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. Also called ice floe. a sheet of floating ice, chiefly on the surface of the sea, smaller than an ice field.

  2. a detached floating portion of such a sheet.

Origin of floe

1
First recorded in 1810–20; perhaps from Norwegian flo “layer” (compare Old Norse flō “layer, level”); cognate with Old English flōh “piece, flagstone”; cf. flaw1

Words that may be confused with floe

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use floe in a sentence

  • About this time, too, we met numerous fields and floes of ice, to get through which we often experienced considerable difficulty.

    Hudson Bay | R.M. Ballantyne

British Dictionary definitions for floe

floe

/ (fləʊ) /


noun

Origin of floe

1
C19: probably from Norwegian flo slab, layer, from Old Norse; see flaw 1

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for floe

floe

[ flō ]


  1. A mass or sheet of floating ice.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.