Glacier

How to spell glacier

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce glacier

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does glacier mean?

1. nounA large, slow-moving mass of ice formed from compacted snow on land.

Glacier in a sentence

• The retreating glacier left a deep valley carved into the rock.

• Tourists hiked across the glacier wearing crampons and ropes.

Where does glacier come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Latin glacies, which simply meant 'ice'. From that root the French formed glace for ice, and the diminutive-style derivative glacier to describe a vast, slow-moving river of ice in the mountains. English adopted the French glacier in the 1700s, when Alpine travel and early scientific study of mountain ice were becoming fashionable, and the French spelling was kept intact. The same glacies root survives in the word 'glace', the glossy icing on cakes, and in 'glacial', meaning icy or extremely slow. Because English took the form straight from French, the ending keeps its tricky -cier shape rather than the plain -er an English speaker might expect, which is exactly where the spelling catches people out.

How the word is built

• glac- (from Latin glacies: ice)
• -ier (noun suffix)