Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A more or less continuous belt or stream of ice-floes driven in a certain direction by wind or current, or both.
  • noun A stream-like glacier; a stream of slowly moving ice.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The Ilulissat Icefjord is a tidewater ice-stream located 1,000 km up the west coast of Greenland.

    Ilulissat Icefjord, Denmark-Greenland 2008

  • Such research has enlarged understanding of ice-stream dynamics, glacial erosion and deposition, Quaternary geology and prehistoric climates through the examination of ice cores.

    Ilulissat Icefjord, Denmark-Greenland 2008

  • I could scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the house empty.

    Twilight in Italy 2003

  • Impinging on our eastern coast of Scotland and of northern England, it spread over a great part of Holderness, meeting and blending with the inland native glacier on the Humber; and the vast united ice-stream thence pursued its onward southern course, enfolding everything in its icy embrace, to the Thames and to the Severn. {89b} These great ice-streams created the geological formation called “The Drift,” or boulder-clay, which we have at Woodhall.

    Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter James Conway Walter

  • On the other hand, the map mentioned, after displacing the name White from the larger glacier to which it logically belongs, gave it to the ice-stream feeding another branch of the White river, namely, the glacier always locally called the Winthrop, and so called by Prof. Russell in his report to the Geological Survey in 1897.

    The Mountain that was 'God' Being a Little Book About the Great Peak Which the Indians Named 'Tacoma' but Which is Officially Called 'Rainier' John H. Williams

  • To get round the head of this ice-stream would mean travelling inland for at least thirty miles.

    The Home of the Blizzard Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 Douglas Mawson 1920

  • But when two glacier streams unite, their coinciding lateral moraines come to lie upon the centre of the united ice-stream, and then move forward as central moraines parallel to each other and to the banks of the stream, and they show, as far as the lower end, the boundary line of the ice which originally belonged to one or the other of the arms of the glacier.

    Ice and Glaciers 1909

  • They are very remarkable as displaying in what regular parallel bands the adjacent parts of the ice-stream glide downwards.

    Ice and Glaciers 1909

  • 'Lucky I had these boots resoled and nailed at Chiavagno,' was the only other remark he made till we had passed the seracs of the main glacier and turned up the lesser ice-stream from the Colle delle Rondini.

    Mr. Standfast John Buchan 1907

  • I could scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed frozen, the house empty.

    Twilight in Italy 1907

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