Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A layered mass of ice formed in temperatures below 0ºC., from the freezing of successive flows of ground water over the previously formed layers of ice.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Icings (also known as aufeis or naleds) are comprised of groundwater that freezes when it reaches the streambed during winter.

    Freshwater ecosystems in the Arctic 2009

  • I watched the plane's shadow glide across Fin Creek and the Ivishak, Kavik, and Echooka Rivers, the last one a braided plain of gravel choked with a frozen skim of aufeis.

    The Great Alaskan Cast and Blast 2004

Comments

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  • "Another possibility is that a mammoth broke through the icy crust covering either small ponds or treacherous permafrost potholes in labyrinthine formations of aufeis, sheets of ice formed when ground water rising to the surface freezes in winter..."

    —Richard Stone, Mammoth: The Resurrection of an Ice Age Giant, (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2001), 50

    September 20, 2008