glacier mouse
glacier mouse noun: a ball of moss, often surrounding a rock, that moves across a glacier.
Noun
glacier mouse (plural glacier mice)
- A ball of moss, often surrounding a rock, that moves across a glacier.
- I call these mossy balls Jökla-mýs, literally "glacier mice," and you will have noted, Sir, that rolling stones can gather moss.1950, Jón Eythórsson, “Jökla-mýs”, in Journal of Glaciology, volume 1, number 9, →DOI, page 503
- Such glacier mice are more or less spheroidal mosses which lie unattached on the ice surface.2014, James H. Dickson, Robert E. Johnson, “Mosses and the beginning of plant succession on the Walker Glacier, southeastern Alaska”, in Lindbergia, volume 37, number 2, →DOI, pages 60–65
Forms of glacier mouse
| plural | glacier mice |
|---|
Origin of glacier mouse
Calque of Icelandic jökla-mýs. Coined by geologist Jón Eythórsson in 1950. The Icelandic term appears only in plural form.
Questions about glacier mouse
- What does glacier mouse mean?
- Glacier mouse means a ball of moss, often surrounding a rock, that moves across a glacier.
- What part of speech is glacier mouse?
- Glacier mouse is a noun.
- What is the plural of glacier mouse?
- The plural of glacier mouse is glacier mice.
Words near glacier mouse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: glacier mouse (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.
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