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iceberg

UK/ˈaɪsbɜːɡ/US/ˈaɪsbɝɡ/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,254 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: icebergs

An iceberg is the floating ice mountain that hides most of itself underwater. Strike an iceberg, a huge iceberg, the tip of the iceberg.

Roughly nine tenths sits below the surface, which is where the phrase about the tip comes from, and that hidden bulk is why they are so dangerous to ships. They calve from glaciers and are made of fresh water. The name came from Dutch and means ice mountain.

AWeith · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of iceberg

  1. 1nounicebergA large mass of floating ice.B1+

    “The Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912.”

iceberg is a mass of ice.

Where it comes from

From Dutch ijsberg, ice mountain. It first named a glacier seen from a ship.

  1. Middle Dutch

    ijsberch

  2. English, today

    iceberg

From ijsberg. ijsberg (compound of ijs + berg), from Middle Dutch ijsberch. First used to describe a glacier as seen at a distance from a ship then used as a term to describe the floating chunks of ice broken off from such glaciers. Cognate to German Eisberg, Danish isbjerg, Norwegian isberg and Swedish isberg. Figurative senses in reference to the fact that only one-tenth of an iceberg is usually visible above water.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

iceberg in the wild

  • Much of an iceberg is below the water's surface, which led to the expression "tip of the iceberg" to illustrate a small part of a larger unseen issue.

    Iceberg

  • Icebergs that calve from glaciers in Greenland are often irregularly shaped while Antarctic ice shelves often produce large tabular (table top) icebergs.

    Iceberg

  • Iceberg B 15 was the largest recorded iceberg by area.

    Iceberg B-15

  • Calved from the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica in March 2000, Iceberg B-15 broke up into smaller icebergs, the largest of which was named Iceberg B-15-A.

    Iceberg B-15

  • Ice calving, also known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier.

    Ice calving

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • tip of the iceberg
  • the tip of the iceberg