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shelf ice

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noun

ice forming part of or broken from an ice shelf.

Origin of shelf ice

First recorded in 1910–15
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for shelf ice

Historical Examples of shelf ice

  • The highest point was fifty feet above the level of the top of the shelf-ice.

  • The glacier-tongue bore all the characters of shelf-ice, by which is meant a floating extension of the land-ice.

  • At a distance, large bergs would be undistinguishable from shelf-ice, appearances of which were reported above.

  • Wild, Harrison and Hoadley went to examine the shelf-ice with a view to its suitability for a wintering station.

  • In all, thirty-six tons of stores were raised on to the shelf-ice, one hundred feet above sea-level, in four days.

British Dictionary definitions for shelf ice

shelf ice

noun

a less common term for ice shelf
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
shelf ice in Science

shelf ice

An extension of glacial ice into coastal waters that is in contact with the bottom near the shore but not toward the outer edge of the shelf.
The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.