Other forms: ices
Ice is water frozen hard. A block of ice, ice on the pond, ice in the drink.
It floats, which is unusual — most substances are denser as solids — and that single fact is why lakes freeze from the top and life survives underneath. Ice age, iceberg, ice cream and ice rink are standard. Note break the ice, meaning to get a conversation started; on thin ice, meaning in a risky position; and put something on ice, meaning to postpone it indefinitely.
1nouniceWater frozen hard.
“Put some ice in my drink, please; it's so hot today.”
ice is frozen water.
Old English is is Germanic and its deeper root is uncertain. Iceland, Icelandic and every ice- compound descend from it, and the word has changed almost nothing in a thousand years.
Middle English
is
English, today
ice
From Middle English is. From Middle English hyse, hyys, ice, ijs, is, yce, ys, yys, from Old English īs, from Proto-West Germanic īs, from Proto-Germanic īsą (“ice”), from Proto-Indo-European h₁eyH- (“ice, frost”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA