Ice

How to spell ice

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ice

What does ice mean?

1. nounFrozen water, hard and cold in solid form.
2. verbTo cover a cake with a sugar coating, or to chill something with frozen water.

Ice in a sentence

• noun

  The path was covered in ice after the overnight frost.

• verb

  She will ice the birthday cake once it has fully cooled.

• noun

  She added a few cubes of ice to her drink.

• verb

  Trainers often ice a sore knee to bring down the swelling.

Where does ice come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Ice comes straight from the Old English word is, which simply meant frozen water and was the everyday term for it. That word belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives such as Dutch ijs and German Eis, all tracing back to a shared ancestor meaning the same cold, solid form of water. The spelling shifted over the centuries from is to the modern ice, picking up the silent finishing flourish that the letter c with a final e gives an English word. Because the word is so short and ancient, it has stayed remarkably stable in meaning, though English later stretched it into verbs for chilling drinks and for covering a cake with sugar. The familiar -ce ending, rather than a plain -s, is the only real spelling quirk, and it mirrors the same pattern seen in mice and dice.

How the word is built

• ice (single root from Old English is, frozen water; no prefix or suffix)