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▪ I. glacial, a.|ˈgleɪʃɪəl, -ʃəl|
Also 7 glaciale.
[a. F. glacial, ad. L. glaciālis icy, f. glaciēs ice.]
1. Full of, or having the nature of, ice; cold, icy, freezing. rare.
1656Blount Glossogr., Glacial, where ice is, freezing, cold. 1701Grew Cosm. Sacra iv. v. §38. 203 Snowy or what ever else he [Spinoza] means by Glacial Air, or Clouds, may serve to darken the Day, but not at all prolong it. 1890Edin. Rev. Jan. 61 Unintermittent glacial rain set in.
fig.1852Longfellow in Life (1891) II. 229 No wonder that their stricken faculties uttered themselves in such broken accents, such glacial metres! 1860Motley Netherl. xvii. II. 303 His frame was slight..his manner more glacial and sepulchral than ever.
b. Consisting of ice.
1794Sullivan View Nat. I. 409 The enormous glacial masses of the poles. 1853Kane Grinnell Exp. viii. (1856) 57 The gelid flow of these glacial rivers.
2. Of chemical substances: Glass-like; crystallized. (Obs. exc. as in b.)
1681Boyle New Exper. Icy Noctiluca 18, I thought it not amiss to call our consistent Self-shining Substance, the Icy or Glacial Noctiluca (and for variety—Phosphorus). 1693Salmon Bates' Dispens. i. (1713) 358/2 From lb. iij. of the first Matter, you will have, says Rolfincius, a Glaciale Butter. 1771Watson Phil. Trans. LXI. 217 White vitriol, a few glacial spicula. 1796Kirwan Elem. Min. (ed. 2) II. 104 Phosphoric acid in a Glacial state.
b. glacial acetic acid, pure acetic acid in crystals; glacial phosphoric acid, metaphosphoric acid (HPO3); glacial sulphuric acid, † glacial oil of vitriol, pure sulphuric acid in crystals.
1786H. Cavendish in Phil. Trans. LXXVI. 268 The oil of vitriol prepared from green vitriol, has sometimes been obtained in such a state as to remain constantly congealed..whence it acquired its name of glacial. 1800tr. Lagrange's Chem. II. 42 Glacial sulphuric acid. 1819Brande Man. Chem. (1841) 685 When dried and fused in a crucible, a transparent glass is obtained, commonly called glacial phosphoric acid. 1843Pereira Food & Diet 149 Glacial or Crystallisable Acetic Acid, the strongest procurable, contains one equivalent of water. 1879Cassell's Techn. Educ. IV. 357/2 The acetic acid..usually employed in photography is what is termed glacial, and should become solid at about 40°.
3. Geol. Characterized by the presence of ice. glacial epoch, glacial era, glacial period, a geological period during which it is supposed that the northern hemisphere was in great part covered by an ice-sheet. glacial sea: the sea of the glacial epoch.
In America this period is also known as the drift epoch (see drift n. 10), ice-age, etc.
1846E. Forbes in Mem. Geol. Surv. I. 363 The remarkable strata known under the names of ‘Boulder clay’, ‘Arctic or northern drift’..including (in part) the ‘Till’ deposits, which for convenience I shall henceforth mention as glacial, or as beds of the glacial epoch. 1851Richardson Geol. viii. 211 The rhinoceros and elephant, which lived under the latitude of the glacial sea. 1853Phillips Rivers Yorksh. iv. 124 For all Holderness was a sea-bed in the ‘glacial’ period. 1862Dana Man. Geol. 541 The Drift epoch is usually called the Glacial epoch, under the idea that ice either in the form of icebergs or glaciers, was concerned in the transportation of the boulders, pebbles, and earth. 1873Dawson Earth & Man xii. 283 The earlier Post⁓pliocene period of geology may be called the Glacial era.
b. Produced by the presence of ice in the form of glaciers, etc. or by its action upon the surface of the earth; pertaining to glaciers or ice-sheets.
1858Geikie Hist. Boulder ii. 17 They corroborate our conclusions as to the glacial origin of the boulder-clay. 1860G. H. K. Vac. Tour 120 Curious mounds of gravel, which look very like glacial moraines. 1863Lyell Antiq. Man i. (ed. 3) 2, I shall give a description of the glacial formations of Europe and North America. 1872Nicholson Palæont. 18 The glacial mud of the Polar regions. 1878Huxley Physiogr. 164 Evidence of glacial denudation in countries which are now free from anything like glaciers or icebergs.
Hence ˌglaciaˈlation, the condition of being covered with ice or glaciers; ˈglacialism, the theory of the action of ice upon the earth's surface; ˈglacialized ppl. a., acted upon by ice.
1864Reader 2 Apr. 432/2 They present characters in common with lake-basins occurring in regions which were intensely glacialized. 1881W. B. Dawkins in Nature XXIII. 309 Dr. James Geikie..pushes glacialism and interglacialism to an extreme. 1889Standard 25 June 5/2 The plucky trip of Dr. Nansen has now rendered the entire glacialation of inner Greenland no longer a theory.
Add:4. fig. Of the pace of any process: extremely slow. Of a process: taking place very gradually.
1922Joyce Ulysses 692 A dwarf tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade. 1954A. Stevenson Call to Greatness 70, I strongly suspect that we in America are destined to endure in prolonged and irritable impatience the glacial pace of European integration. 1969D. Acheson Present at Creation vii. 58 Negotiations with the Swiss moved at their glacial rate. 1977Time 8 Aug. 40/1, I see a steady, glacial shift out of equities and into bonds. 1991New Scientist 23 Feb. 16/3 The US was mainly to blame for the ‘glacial pace’ of the negotiations, according to the Climate Action Network for the US.
▪ II. glacial, n.|ˈgleɪʃɪal, -ʃəl|
[f. the adj.]
A glacial epoch or period.
1935Discovery Nov. 317/2 Hardly one of the species present in England today could possibly have persisted here from the Tertiary Period through the glacials. 1957G. E. Hutchinson Treat. Limnol. I. i. 49 High lake levels in equatorial Africa represent pluvial periods corresponding to the glacials. |