Word.ws English Dictionary

glacis

Syllables: glac·is/ˈɡleɪsɪs/

glacis noun: a gentle incline.

Noun

glacis (plural glacises or glacis)

  1. A gentle incline.
    • The foam of these great ruins mounts in an instant to the ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back again, and is met and buried by the next breaker.1880, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Old Pacific Canal: The Woods and the Pacific”, in Across the Plains: With Other Memories and Essays, London: Chatto & Windus, […], published 1892, →OCLC, page 79
    1. A gentle sloping landform created by the deposition or erosion of material.
    2. (also, figuratively) A gentle incline in front of a fortification which protects it from cannon fire and exposes attackers to more effective return fire from defenders.
      • I think, quoth Corporal Trim, with humble submission to your Honour’s better judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it were we in the country...1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXX, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
      • [T]ook his place with solemn
        Air 'midst the rest, who kept their valiant faces
        And levelled weapons still against the glacis.1823 July 15, [Lord Byron], Don Juan. Cantos VI.—VII.—and VIII., London: […] [C. H. Reynell] for John Hunt, […], →OCLC, canto VIII, stanza XXXIV, page 128
    3. In full glacis plate: the angled armour plate on the front of a tank which protects it from projectiles; also (often nautical), such a plate protecting an opening (for example, on a ship).
    4. (postal) A device for sorting mail which slides parcels across a sloped surface.

Proper noun capitalized: Glacis

Glacis

  1. An administrative district of Seychelles.

glacis meaning in Tamil and Persian

glacis in Tamil

அரண்மென்சரிவு

glacis in Persian

gentle incline in front of a fortification
شیب حصار

Synonyms of glacis

Forms of glacis

pluralglacises
pluralglacis

Origin of glacis

Borrowed from French glacis (“slippery surface”), derived from Old French glacier (“to glide; freeze”), the former from Latin glaciāre (“to freeze”), from glaciēs (“ice”), of uncertain origin. Cognates * Medieval Latin glatia (“incline in front of a fortification”)

Words that rhyme with glacis

Questions about glacis

What does glacis mean?
Glacis means a gentle incline.
What is glacis in Tamil?
Glacis in Tamil is அரண்மென்சரிவு. See Glacis meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is glacis?
Glacis can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce glacis?
Glacis is pronounced /ˈɡleɪsɪs/ (UK).
What is the plural of glacis?
The plural of glacis is glacises.

Words near glacis in the dictionary

  1. glaciotectonite
  2. glaciotectonites
  3. glacious
  4. glaciovolcanic
  5. glaciovolcanism
  6. glacis
  7. glacises
  8. Glacken
  9. Glackens
  10. Glackin
  11. Glackins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glacis (page history and authors); Glacis (page history and authors); glacis (Tamil Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-glacis1.wav.

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