ice
/aɪs/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.00 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any volatile chemical, such as water, ammonia, or carbon dioxide, not necessarily in solid form, when discussing the composition of e.g. a planet as an ice giant vs a gas giant.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "He said, “Where we’re at right now was back in 2008 all covered with ice. From here to there at the side, the glacier shrank about 20 to 30 meters.”"
- "If thou doſt marry, Ile giue thee / This plague to thy dowry: / Be thou as chaſte as yce, as pure as ſnowe, / Thou ſhalt not ſcape calumny, to a Nunnery goe."
- "1882, Popular Science Monthly (volume 20), "The Freezing of a Salt Lake" It has always been difficult to explain how ice is formed on the surface of oceans while the temperature of maximum density is lower than that of cogelation, and the observations on this lake were instituted in the hope that they might throw light upon the subject."
- "Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything."
- "Above the core is the lower-density liquid mantle composed of ice materials under high pressure and temperature. This massive liquid layer would not be separated into layers of traditional ice compounds, but mixtures of radically different compounds originally consisting of water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia […] Since the mass of the planet is dominated by the liquid mantle that itself consists of heated ices under pressure, both Uranus and Neptune are classified as giant ice planets."
- "Uranus and Neptune are […] usually classified separately as ice giants because they contain a much higher proportion of ice-forming substances such as water, ammonia, and methane. […] In the case of Uranus, the ice mantle must make up between 9.3 and 13.4 Earth masses worth of the total mass of the planet, which is 14.5 Earth masses. Similar proportions apply to Neptune. The commonly used term "ice mantle" is someone misleading, since the substance is actually a hot, slushy mixture that would be more aptly described as a water–ammonia ocean."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyH- Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyH-so-der. Proto-Germanic *īsą Proto-West Germanic *īs Old English īs Middle English is English ice From Middle English hyse, hyys, ice, ijs, is, yce, ys, yys, from Old English īs, from Proto-West Germanic *īs, from Proto-Germanic *īsą (“ice”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyH- (“ice, frost”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian Iis, is (“ice”), Saterland Frisian Ies (“ice”), West Frisian iis (“ice”), Alemannic German Iis, isch, éisch (“ice”), Bavarian, Cimbrian, and Mòcheno ais (“ice”), Dutch ijs (“ice”), German Eis (“ice”), German Low German Ies (“ice”), Luxembourgish Äis (“ice”), Vilamovian ajs (“ice”), Yiddish אײַז (ayz, “ice”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish is (“ice”), Elfdalian ais (“ice”), Faroese ísur (“ice”), Icelandic ís (“ice”); also Cornish yey (“ice”), yeyn (“cold”), Irish oighear (“ice”), Scottish Gaelic deigh, eigh, eighre (“ice”), Welsh iâ (“ice”), Lithuanian ýnis (“hoar frost”), Bulgarian and Russian и́ней (ínej, “hoar frost”), Czech jíní (“frost”), Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian и́ње (“hoar frost”), Ukrainian і́ній (ínij, “hoar frost, rime”), Ossetian их (ix, “ice”), Armenian եղյամ (eġyam, “frost, hoar frost, rime”), Persian یخ (yax, “ice”), Hittite 𒂊𒃷 (“ice”). Superseded non-native Middle English glace (“ice”), borrowed from Old French glace (“ice”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: hyse, īs, *īs, *īsą, *h₁eyH-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /aɪs/
- British English: /aɪs/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Law.
Inflected Forms
ices (plural)
yce (alternative, obsolete)
ices (present, singular)
icing (participle, present)
iced (participle, past)
iced (past)
ICEing (participle, present)
more ICE (comparative)
most ICE (superlative)