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frazil

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frazil ice noun Also frazil

[Frazil's earliest recorded use for ice is arctic, in Canadian English (1870). Its origin in DCanE is given as the French fraisil cinder, which it suggests might refer to the fragmented nature of the ice. However, I find only a tenuous connection between lumpish cinders and spicules of ice.]

Needles or plates of sea ice giving an oily or slushy appearance to seawater, often forming in rough water, or as precursor to ice floes.

13 Dec 1930 Mawson, Douglas in Jacka, Fred and Jacka, Eleanor, eds (1991) Mawson's antarctic diaries Allen & Unwin, Sydney: 361.

Some of ice rafts later today were very young, only few days old. Much brash and frazil ice. Some of young soft pieces were slightly of pancake character.

1956 Armstrong, Terence and Roberts, Brian in Polar Record 8(52) Jan: 6.

Frazil ice: Fine spicules or plates of ice in suspension in water. The first stage of freezing, giving an oily or opaque appearance to the surface.

1964 Jenkins, Geoffrey A grue of ice Fontana Books, London: 114.

Anything to escape, with all the thrust of her great turbines, from the same platelike crystals of ice called by whalermen frazil crystals, which now hung half-submerged in the sea everywhere, plates of ice which come together with uncanny speed and form the ice belt.

1990 Naveen, Ron, Monteath, Colin, de Roy, Tui and Jones, Mark Wild ice: Antarctic journeys Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington: 100.

As the autumn days of March become shorter and the air temperature drops, the sea begins to freeze, unobtrusively, almost surreptitiously. Spicules of frazil ice start to grow and float to the surface, giving the sea a greasy appearance. Hesitant at first, the delicate crystalline needles form the foundation for the imminent expansion of Antarctica's frozen limits.

1994 Dallas Morning News 12 Dec: 9D.

Antarctic winter sea ice is often born as a thin film of grease ice that, at a distance, looks like yards of black silk thrown across undulating waves. This film comprises frazil crystals that resemble transparent interlocking gingko leaves, no more than two-tenths of an inch in diameter.

1951 Bowers, Birdie, quoted in Seaver, George 'Birdie' Bowers of the Antarctic John Murray, London: 185.

The two sledges securing the other end of the line were on the next floe and had been pulled right to the edge. Our camp was on a floe not more than 30 yards across. I shouted to Cherry and Crean, and rushed out in my socks to save the two sledges; the two floes were touching farther on and I dragged them to this place and got them on to our floe. At that moment our own floe split in two, but we were altogether in one piece.

The Antarctic Dictionary, Hince, 2000; 136