ice sheet

noun

a broad, thick sheet of ice covering an extensive area for a long period of time.

a glacier covering a large fraction of a continent.

Origin of ice sheet

First recorded in 1870–75

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for ice sheet

Historical Examples of ice sheet

Under his single weight we could see the ice-sheet undulating.
Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled
Hudson Stuck
Underneath the ice-sheet the stones, sand, and clay behaved in the same way.
Fragments of Earth Lore
James Geikie
Eventually, however, this later advance of the ice-sheet ceased.
Fragments of Earth Lore
James Geikie
All of them thus owe their origin to the action of the ice-sheet.
Fragments of Earth Lore
James Geikie
The progress of the ice-sheet was southward, but it spread like a fan so that its widening border turned to east and west.
Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know
Julia Ellen Rogers

British Dictionary definitions for ice sheet

ice sheet

noun

a thick layer of ice covering a large area of land for a long time, esp those in Antarctica and Greenland

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

ice sheet in Science

ice sheet

A large sheet of ice and snow that covers an entire region and spreads out under its own weight. Ice sheets have an area of more than 50,000 square km (19,500 square mi). Compare icecap.