Other forms: glaciers
A glacier is a giant river of ice that moves down a mountain over centuries. A retreating glacier, the foot of the glacier, walk on the glacier.
It flows because its own weight makes the ice at the bottom deform, at anything from a few centimetres to a few metres a day. A glacier carves the valley it sits in into a U shape, and the rock it grinds off turns meltwater a milky blue.
1nounglacierA giant river of ice moving down a mountain.
“We crossed the glacier with spikes on our boots so we wouldn't slip on the ice.”
glacier is a body of ice.
French glacier comes from a dialect word built on Latin glacies, ice. It entered English in the eighteenth century.
Latin
glaciēs — ice
Vulgar Latin
*glaciārium
frp
gllaciér
French
glacier
English, today
glacier
French glacier, from frp gllaciér, from Vulgar Latin glaciārium, a derivative of Latin glaciēs (“ice”), of uncertain origin. First attested in English in 1744 per the OED.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA