glaciation

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the sub-tropical.

View all »
Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

  1. The act of freezing. The water or other liquor usually beginning to freeze at the top, and it being the nature of glaciation to distend the water and aqueous liquors it hardens, it is usually and naturally consequent, that when the upper-crust of ice is grown thick, and by reason of the expansion of the frozen liquor bears hard with its edges against the sides of the glass contiguous to it, the included liquor (that is by degrees successively turned into ice), requiring more room than before, and forcibly endeavoring to expand itself every way, finds it less difficult to burst the glass than lift up the ice. Boyle, Hist. Cold, v.
  2. The result of freezing; ice. [Rare.] It [ice] is plain upon the surface of the water, but round in hayl, which is also a glaciation. Sir T. Browne, Vulg. Err., ii. 1.
  3. In geology, the present or former existence of a mass of ice, glacier, or ice-sheet, covering a certain region; subjection to the action of ice. Thus, it is said that the surface of the country in Sweden exhibits the effects of a former glaciation— that is, that the surfaces of the rocks in many places are smoothed or striated, as they are under or near actual glaciers in the Alps or elsewhere. Such surfaces are said to be glaciated.
1 more from this dictionary »

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • “The most in-your-face statement I can make is that humans stopped a glaciation,” he said. —  Magazine - Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2007 - Issue 04 - April
  • Remember that scout who just came back from the Wurm glaciation, did the work on CroMagnon lifestyles Yeah, I remember reading that. —  Time Scout
  • The quiet routine of his life was diversified by many visits to provincial towns to deliver lectures or addresses, by meetings of the British Association, by holidays in Switzerland, during which, with Tyndall, he made special studies of the phenomena of glaciation, and in the usual Continental resorts, and by several trips to America. —  Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work
  • Hayes observed that the current interglacial would naturally end in the next 20,000 years, leading to a new glaciation, and Schneider said that if sulfate aerosols increased enough, they could lead to cooling. —  RealClimate
  • The odds are we are facing a major glaciation, the deaths of billions of humans, and the total destruction of the current environment. —  Latest Articles
More examples »
 

Tags

glaciation hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 35 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

If you'd like to prod us on getting a pronunciation for this word, sign in (or sign up) and let us know.

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a year.

Recently looked up

maven · Bidden · copulating · Kow · Actual

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

procrastinate · its not like im ugly people tell me im pretty · be careful! the razor is razor-sharp! · minty-fresh death threat · please stop sucking the monkeybread