Icy means frozen and dangerously slippery, or extremely cold. Icy roads, an icy wind, icy conditions.
Black ice is the transparent kind on roads that cannot be seen, and it is the reason icy is a warning rather than a description. Of a manner it means unfriendly and cold: an icy stare, an icy silence, an icy politeness — and that use is very common. Note ice, icicle, icing; and that icy and freezing overlap, with freezing about the temperature and icy about the surface.
1adjectiveicyFrozen and dangerously slippery, or extremely cold.
“Drive carefully; the roads are icy this morning.”
2adjectiveunfriendlyUnfriendly and cold in manner.
“She gave him an icy stare and walked out without a word.”
icy is a quality of coldness.
Also accepted in games: freezing
Middle English
is
English
ice
English, today
icy
From ice + -y; cf. Old English īsiġ. ice comes 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