Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The precipitous front of a tide-water glacier.
  • noun A cliff formed by marine erosion, in arctic regions, where the land consists of ice with more or less interstratified and overlying detritus.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • There are certain times when you won’t be behind the butt of a rifle, either during a setpiece moment such as climbing up a vertical ice-cliff, rappelling face-first down a desert embankment or directing a speeding Zodiak motorboat down a rushing river.

    Review: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – The Review Crew 2010

  • Pulling off to the berg, they found the shelf on which lay the dead seal, and climbing the ice-cliff, they saw spread out before them a strange and pleasing spectacle.

    Adrift in the Ice-Fields Charles W. Hall

  • A few hundred feet from the outer edge of the ice-cliff, the forested moraine became a "dead" glacier.

    The Call of the Beaver Patrol or, A Break in the Glacier V. T. Sherman

  • Each succeeding sea lifted the helpless ship, and then tossed her with increasing violence against the jagged ice-cliff.

    The Von Toodleburgs Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family A. R. [Illustrator] Waud

  • The remainder of the herd slid over the ice-cliff and flopped away at good speed toward a break in the ice through which they could get into the water.

    On a Torn-Away World Or, the Captives of the Great Earthquake Roy Rockwood

  • As he ceased reading, the boy's face was turned to the ice-cliff, where the plashing water flowed in a huge sheet, like a falling veil, over the face of the berg, shutting out from sight the twining pillars and narrow entrance of the sealer's tomb.

    Adrift in the Ice-Fields Charles W. Hall

  • This great ice-cliff with its crevasses, towers, bastions and cornices, was a never-ending source of delight to us; it forms the snout of one of the many glaciers which slide down the slopes of Erebus: in smooth slopes and contours where the mountain underneath is of regular shape: in impassable icefalls where the underlying surface is steep or broken.

    The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922

  • Between us and that pressure, as we were to find out afterwards, was a great ice-cliff.

    The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922

  • Some difficulty was experienced the next morning in climbing the ice-cliff on to the Peninsula, but Atkinson, using his knife as a purchase, and the sledge held at arm's-length by four men as a ladder, succeeded eventually in getting a foothold.

    The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922

  • First there was a steep slope, so hard that a pick made little impression upon it, so slippery that if you started down in finnesko you never could stop: this ended in a great ice-cliff some hundreds of feet high, and then came miles of pressure ridges, crevassed and tumbled, in which you might as well look for a daisy as a tent: and after that the open sea.

    The Worst Journey in the World Antarctic 1910-1913 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 1922

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