Glacial

How to spell glacial

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce glacial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does glacial mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to glaciers or the ice ages, or to the action of moving ice.
2. adjectiveExtremely cold and unfriendly, or painfully slow.

Glacial in a sentence

• The valley was carved by glacial erosion thousands of years ago.

• Negotiations moved at a glacial pace and dragged on for months.

• Geologists study glacial deposits to map ancient ice sheets.

• She greeted the latecomers with a glacial stare.

Where does glacial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin glacialis, meaning 'icy' or 'frozen', which was formed from the noun glacies, the ordinary Latin word for 'ice'. English borrowed it through French in the early 1600s, at first simply to mean 'icy' or 'resembling ice'. In the nineteenth century, as geologists began to understand how vast sheets of ice had once carved the landscape, glacial took on its scientific sense of 'relating to glaciers and ice ages', and that became its dominant meaning. From the literal chill came two familiar figurative uses: a 'glacial' pace, agonisingly slow like the creep of a glacier, and a 'glacial' manner, coldly unfriendly. The same Latin glacies underlies the French word glace ('ice' and 'ice cream'), which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps a single c followed by -ial, not the -tial you might expect.

How the word is built

• glaci- (from Latin glacies: ice)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)