black frost

black frost noun: cold so intense as to freeze vegetation and turn it black, without the formation of hoar frost.

Noun

black frost (countable and uncountable, plural black frosts)

Cold so intense as to freeze vegetation and turn it black, without the formation of hoar frost.

Synonyms:

killing frost
A mist of very cold droplets that freeze upon impact and coat objects (such as parts of a ship) with ice, potentially causing a ship to capsize.
- The question was raised because of the trawlers of the lost Hull trawlers Lorella and Roderigo, which, it has been suggested, were not adequately warned of the freak black frost conditions by shore-based radio stations.1955, World Fishing, IPC Industrial Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 106
- ‘Black Frost is like a dense mist and when it lifts it leaves ice all over the ship the ropes round the masts are sometimes 1½ feet in diameter. When black frost hits a ship men are allowed to drink rum by the bottle to keep themselves warm.’1962, Jeremy Tunstall, The Fishermen, MacGibbon & Kee, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 97

This drop is often made obvious by the formation of Arctic frost-smoke fog, or ‘black frost’ as it is known by fishermen.1970, The Marine Observer. Published by the Authority of the Meteorological Committee, Air Ministry, London. The Review of the Marine...
[…] "black frost" may extend above the observer covering the whole ship.1976, H. O. Mertins, Compendium of Lecture Notes in Marine Meteorology for Class III and Class IV Personnel, page 68:
The ship was iced up worse than Dai had ever known it and a heavy swell was running, so when the black frost began to rise from the water everyone had been too busy to notice it.2011 June 30, Katie Flynn, Liverpool Taffy: Family Saga, Random House, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 175:

plural	black frosts

What does black frost mean?: Black frost means cold so intense as to freeze vegetation and turn it black, without the formation of hoar frost.
What is black frost in Tamil?: Black frost in Tamil is கரியவுறைபனி (kariyavuṟaipaṉi). See Black frost meaning in Tamil.
How do you use black frost in a sentence?: This drop is often made obvious by the formation of Arctic frost-smoke fog, or ‘black frost’ as it is known by fishermen.
What part of speech is black frost?: Black frost is a noun.
What is the plural of black frost?: The plural of black frost is black frosts.

Adapted from Wiktionary: black frost (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “black frost.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black_frost. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.