ice floe
5
5.0
- noun
- /aɪs floʊ/
- UK
:
banquisa
- Around the North Pole is ocean, with ice floes crowding in each winter and thinning again in the summers.
Examples
-
It's an ice floe, and throughout this region of the North Atlantic are many icebergs, sir.
-
In a photo sent around the world, a polar bear is pictured alone on an ice floe.
Academic text (2012) -
If we can climb onto an ice floe behind it, we might be saved.
Fiction book (2000) -
Two penguins standing on an ice floe.
-
The river thaws first into ice floes that crash against each other, and then into fast blue water.
Fiction book (1997) -
If she and L'hareni acted fast, they might be able to reach the ice floes just behind it.
Fiction book (2000) -
Out past the ice floes, seagulls squawked as the strong wind pressed them back toward shore.
Fiction book (1996) -
Dense, large ice floes with fractures dominated the eastern Bering Sea.
Academic text (1997) -
Farther out in the strait, large ice floes, wide and flat, glided silently over the water.
Fiction book (2000) -
We floated between ice floes on a cold, empty sea.
Synonyms
9
7.0
A large flat piece of ice that floats on the sea or a lake
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a flat mass of floating ice' is directly and compositionally derived from 'ice' (frozen water) and 'floe' (a floating ice sheet). This noun+noun compounding follows a transparent, cross-linguistically common pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Ice floe names a flat piece of ice that floats on the sea. The word floe may come from old words for 'flow' or 'float', so the phrase gives the picture of a drifting slab of ice and that's why it means 'a flat mass of floating ice' on open water.