glacier

American  

[gley-sher] / ˈgleɪ ʃər /

noun

• glaciers
  plural

1. an extended mass of ice formed from snow falling and accumulating over the years and moving very slowly, either descending from high mountains, as in valley glaciers, or moving outward from centers of accumulation, as in continental glaciers.

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glacier British  

/ ˈɡlæsɪə, ˈɡleɪs- /

noun

1. a slowly moving mass of ice originating from an accumulation of snow. It can either spread out from a central mass ( continental glacier ) or descend from a high valley ( alpine glacier )

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glacier Scientific  

/ glā′shər /

1. A large mass of ice moving very slowly through a valley or spreading outward from a center. Glaciers form over many years from packed snow in areas where snow accumulates faster than it melts. A glacier is always moving, but when its forward edge melts faster than the ice behind it advances, the glacier as a whole shrinks backward.

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glacier Cultural  

1. A large mass of ice formed over many years that does not melt during the summer. Glaciers move slowly over an area of land such as a mountain valley.

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Discover More

A significant percentage of the water of the Earth is locked up in glaciers.

Glaciers exist in high mountains throughout the temperate zones and cover most of Antarctica. Glaciers recede during warm periods and can expand during cold periods, creating ice ages.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• glaciered
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• glaciers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of glacier

1735–45; < dialectal French, derivative of Old French glace ice < Late Latin glacia (for Latin glaciēs )

Explanation

A glacier is a very large ice mass, sometimes miles and miles long. Glaciers might not seem all that exciting at first, but people are paying close attention to them because their melting is an indication of climate change. Most glaciers on Earth are found around the North and South poles, but every continent except for Australia has glaciers somewhere in its high mountain ranges. People often want to go see glaciers because they're beautiful, and some you can actually hike across. Luckily, if you get thirsty glaciers are the planet’s largest reservoir of freshwater. You’ll just have to find some way of melting them . . .

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

glacier glaciers

The rate of glacier shrinkage has been increasing globally since the 1990s and at a particularly accelerated rate since 2000, according to the European Commission's monitoring body Copernicus.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

Data from Glamos, external reported a further glacier reduction of 3% across 2025, following record years of ice loss in 2022 and 2023.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

In some locations, increased glacier melt could temporarily reduce the pace of groundwater decline around the 2060s.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 20, 2026

He takes time to let us hear what a glacier sounds like while showing the swirls of blue ice, but also what it looks like when glaciers collapse and vanish.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026

Carefully placing her hands and feet, Roz climbed up the chunks, higher and higher, to the very top, and then she set out over the glacier.

From "The Wild Robot Protects" by Peter Brown

Sentinel-1 is especially valuable for monitoring remote glaciers because its radar instruments can collect observations both day and night and can see through cloud cover.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

With the glaciers that feed the rivers receding, he writes, “the taps that have kept Europe’s rivers full for thousands of years are running dry.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

The force noted that this was not the first time that the melting of glaciers had exposed the remains of people who had gone missing several decades prior.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

He added: "Our work suggests that tectonic uplift related to continental rifting and breakup created both steep slopes and high ground, providing the mountainous terrain that rivers and glaciers could readily erode."

From Science Daily ● Aug. 21, 2026

The noise of the glaciers breaking sounds like thunder.

From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer

Related Words

• ice floe
• iceberg