ice shelf

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noun

an ice sheet projecting into coastal waters so that the end floats.

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Origin of ice shelf

First recorded in 1910–15

Words nearby ice shelf

ice run, icescape, ice-scoured, ice screw, ice sheet, ice shelf, ice show, ice skate, ice station, ice storm, ice tongs

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

How to use ice shelf in a sentence

These new insights, however, show that the warming Southern Ocean is melting the ice from below, forming large cracks across the floating ice shelf.
The ‘doomsday’ glacier is on the brink of collapse|Sara Kiley Watson|December 18, 2021|Popular-Science
Since about 2004, the eastern third of Thwaites has been braced by a floating ice shelf, an extension of the glacier that juts out into the sea.
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years|Carolyn Gramling|December 13, 2021|Science News
Most likely, the weight of all that water fractured the ice shelf below.
Satellites show how a massive lake in Antarctica vanished in days|Carolyn Gramling|July 12, 2021|Science News
Icy lakes and dolines occur regularly on this ice shelf, Fricker says.
Satellites show how a massive lake in Antarctica vanished in days|Carolyn Gramling|July 12, 2021|Science News

Meanwhile, a roughly Manhattan-sized chunk of Canada’s Milne ice shelf — close to half of what had been the country’s last intact ice shelf — suddenly collapsed into the Arctic Ocean in August, carrying an ice-observing station away with it.
Wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes broke all kinds of records in 2020|Carolyn Gramling|December 21, 2020|Science News
We had traveled five miles on the ice shelf above the foaming sea.
North-Pole Voyages|Zachariah Atwell Mudge
To raise the packages from the floe to the top of the ice-shelf, a "flying-fox" was rigged.
The Home of the Blizzard|Douglas Mawson
The face of the Shackleton Ice-Shelf 100 miles north of the mainland.
The Home of the Blizzard|Douglas Mawson
The open pools gave excellent fishing, and the upper ice shelf protected them perfectly from all enemies.
Secret of the Woods|William J. Long

British Dictionary definitions for ice shelf

ice shelf

noun

a thick mass of ice that is permanently attached to the land but projects into and floats on the sea

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