Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A crest or ridge of rock appearing above the surface of the inland ice in Greenland.
Wiktionary
- n. A mountain top or rocky element of a ridge that is surrounded by glacial ice but is not covered by ice; a peak protruding from the surface ice sheet.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. In Greenland, an insular hill or mountain surrounded by an ice sheet.
Etymologies
- From Greenlandic nunataq. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“At Merger, a "nunatak" or rocky peak sticking out of the ice, the only evidence of a visit by U.S. scientists in 1975 is a tiny metal stake covered by a pile of rocks.”
“Peggy said ... nunatak: I believe that the issue of monomaniacalness (if that's a word) is really central to the issue of making the culture of science more welcoming to women.”
“Data Not Shown is a new science blog by UK postdoc Karen James (aka nunatak).”
“Peggy said ... nunatak: I'll keep an eye on the SciFri blogs”
“One of us, in any case, found immense enjoyment in rolling one big block after another down the steep slopes of the nunatak.”
“We very soon put our things together, and came down the nunatak even more quickly.”
“But in one place a nunatak about 250 feet high stood out in front of the precipice, and the ascent of this offered no great difficulty.”
“I looked at the map and it should have been a nunatak, but the present ice margin was about 10 kilometers away.”
“Sunday update: I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking that I really ought to point out that the opinions expressed in this post belong to me, nunatak, and do not necessarily reflect those of fellow blogger Peter Mc or The Beagle Project.”
“I (nunatak) will be speaking on "Darwin the young explorer" at the Natural History Museum in the Nature Live venue (live stream here).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nunatak’.
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Landforms
A Cyclopedia of Landforms.
plain, mountain, canyon, cliff, hill, arch, cave, plateau, mesa, butte, chimney, peneplain and 169 more...
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250 Spelling Words
A selected sampling of words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
orecchiette, rhabdomancy, guayabera, orthoepy, opisthenar, maguey, proem, ciabatta, cioppino, banns, concinnity, asthenia and 237 more...
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trace
utum, diorite, Mandelbrot, uropygium, bravura, vulpine, vervain, burdock, souse, shantay, legume, sinew and 26 more...
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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bilby's Words
pandemic, whirl, guffaw, ethereal, feisty, dunt, ephemeral, pule, flipergebet, prink, maunder, gammon and 1023 more...
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Words for ice and snow
Environmental Ice and Snow
(excluding all the food ice)ice, icicle, frazil, frasil, sleet, slush, snow, flurry, snowfall, freeze, flash-freeze, quick-freeze and 618 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
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...another list...
I've no idea where I got this page full of words, but whatever it is, I want to find it again. May have duplicate words from other lists.
bicameral, aphelion, dirigible, parhelion, flocculus, vernier, corticate, oxalis, pandanus, calabash, plumbago, jonquil and 217 more...
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Random
These are just some random words that I might find a list for someday.
troglodytism, chinkle, vasculum, sabz, cucullus, tricornigerous, cuboctahedron, eruca, gamp, pilum, taha, angelhood and 243 more...
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Loan words from Inuktitut
anorak, igloo, kayak, umiak, nasaaq, kabloona, piblokto, nunatak, pingo
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Geology Words
The descriptive science described.
earth, lithosphere, mineral, convection, heat flow, ore, deep time, fossil, formation, rock, tectonics, extinction and 281 more...
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she blinded me with science
good heavens miss yakamoto you're beautiful
schwarzschild radius, event horizon, biophilia, buckyballs, superorganism, eusocial, spandrel, undular, exaptation, hydroponics, neoteny, thought experiment and 10 more...
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Geology
baraboo, monadnock, peneplain, endrumpf, peneplanation, cairngorm, paleooology, stream capture, allochthon, slickensides, graywacke, tectonics and 56 more...
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littlestar's lovely words
cerulean, torpid, echolalia, elocution, ecru, ambergris, verdigris, halcyon, wenge, susurration, ululate, elfin and 2 more...
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Glacial Effects
albedo, ablation, crevasse, firn, glacial flour, glacial polish, icefall, jokulhlaup, ice sheet, ice shelf, ice cap, ice stream and 82 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for nunatak.

yarb I guess it was taken there by people with experience of the north, BB. Dec 23, 2008
BrainyBabe If it is a word used in Antarctica, what is its connection to Inuktitut? Dec 23, 2008
qroqqa There's a place in Antarctica called the Whichaway Nunataks, which even as I child I considered deeply scary: lost in the wilds of Antarctica, nuns coming at you from every direction, ninja-like and polar-bear-like concealed under their camouflage twats, crevasses impeding your escape. Nov 22, 2008
dontcry I see a sea of billowing black muslin, tipped here and there with startched-stiff white cotton. I see dour, sunken faces and bony, liver-spotted talons grasping wooden rulers poised for rapping the hell out of sinful young knuckles.
Ahhh, that felt good. May 24, 2008
littlestar Sounds like "Nun attack" - which brings to mind an awesome mental image of nunchuck-wielding, bad-ass ninja nuns (c: May 24, 2008
mollusque An isolated rock peak projecting above the surface of inland ice. Compare monadnock, rognon and pingo. Dec 31, 2007