meltwater

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechmostly written

Other forms: meltwaters

Meltwater is water running off a melting glacier or snowfield. A meltwater stream.

It is the summer water supply for whole regions, which is why shrinking glaciers matter so much. Meltwater carries rock flour, which is what makes the rivers grey and the lakes turquoise.

Definitions of meltwater

1nounmeltwaterWater running off a melting glacier or snowfield.C1
“The meltwater came down brown and rose a metre in an hour.”

meltwater is water.

Where it comes from

Melt plus water; the compound entered English through glaciology in the nineteenth century.

From melt + water.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Weather & Seasons

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meltwater in the wild

According to White, "kames were formed by meltwater which deposited more or less washed material at irregular places in and along melting ice.
Kame
Kame terraces are frequently found along the side of a glacial valley and are stratified deposits of meltwater streams flowing between the ice and the adjacent valley side.
Kame
Sandurs are common in Iceland where geothermal activity accelerates the melting of ice flows and the deposition of sediment by meltwater.
Outwash plain
A moraine-dammed lake, occurs when the terminal moraine has prevented meltwater from leaving the valley.
Moraine-dammed lake
Although they are variously named rivers, creeks or streams, due to the climate of the region, those listed are technically all meltwater streams.
List of rivers of Antarctica

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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.

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