1804 J. Denholm Hist. City of Glasgow & Suburbs (ed. 3) xiii. 437/1 (table) Expenditure... Ice-breaking.

1821 Providence (Rhode Island) Patriot 10 Oct. Mr. William Greene, of Alexandria, has invented an ‘Ice-breaking Machine’, calculated to break through ice of the thickness of six inches, at the rate of from three to four miles an hour, with the same power as an ordinary steam-boat.

1883 Great Internat. Fisheries Exhib. Catal. 362 Ice-breaking Boat..used in..sailing among the Ice.

1956 Nature 31 Mar. 600/2 The two expeditions will share a large ice-breaking sealer.

1970 Daily Tel. 21 Mar. 15 Canadian seal-hunting ships with ice-breaking capacity.

1998 Canad. Geographic Mar. 57/2 Observers speculate about a north-south link moving commodities and goods from the North American heartland; improved icebreaking to lengthen the shipping season; and expanded rail links.

2004 G. Behrendt & L. Tuccillo He's just not that into You 70 It's all good as long as you don't confuse ice-breaking for real intimacy.

1824 Canad. Mag. Dec. 541 He accosted us all gaily, without any of that long ice-breaking conversation about the weather, which generally occupies the first half-hour of our stage-coach journeys.

1875 Geol. Mag. 12 441 Ice will evaporate at any temperature, forming vapour, which would pass into the fissures or fractures made by the ice breaking contact.

1968 F. Exley Fan's Notes ii. 46 I would fling myself into a chair, stick my Yello-Bole [pipe] into my jaw, and to their preliminary and ‘ice-breaking’ questions begin issuing a sequence of noises not unlike hog noises.

2007 Canad. Geographic Jan. 44/2 But not mentioned in the glossy Coast Guard brochures is the fact that when she arrived at the pole, the Russians had already been here in their nuclear-powered ice-breaking brute Yamal.