Iceberg

How to spell iceberg

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce iceberg

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does iceberg mean?

1. nounA large mass of floating ice that has broken away from a glacier, with most of its bulk hidden below the waterline.

Iceberg in a sentence

• The cruise ship altered course to avoid a drifting iceberg.

• Radar warned the crew of an iceberg several miles ahead.

Where does iceberg come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Iceberg entered English in the eighteenth century as a borrowing of the Dutch word ijsberg, which literally meant 'ice mountain', from ijs 'ice' and berg 'mountain'. Closely related forms existed across the seafaring languages of northern Europe, including the Norwegian and Danish isberg, and English sailors picked up the term to describe the huge floating masses of ice they met in the cold Atlantic. The first half was soon adjusted to the familiar English spelling 'ice', while the second half kept its foreign 'berg', a piece that survives in modern German and Dutch place names. That same berg root, meaning a hill or mountain, also lurks inside surnames and words like 'inselberg', a lone rocky hill. The half-translated nature of the word is the small spelling trap: it is 'ice' plus 'berg', never 'iceburg'.

How the word is built

• ice (frozen water)
• berg (mountain, from Dutch/Germanic)