Word.ws English Dictionary

permafrost

UK/ˈpɜːməˌfɹɔst//ˈpɝməˌfɹɔst/

permafrost noun: permanently frozen ground, or a specific layer thereof.

permafrost: permanently frozen ground, or a specific layer thereof
Image: JukoFF, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

permafrost (countable and uncountable, plural permafrosts)

  1. Permanently frozen ground, or a specific layer thereof.
    • Nevertheless, the water molecule is present, as ice, in a solid form in frozen soils or permafrosts, which cover large regions characterised by a polar climate.2003, Johannes C. Nonner, Introduction to Hydrogeology, →ISBN, page 157
    • In agreement with our overall trends within the permafrost samples, lower nirK and nirS and higher nosZ diversity have been identified in cryoturbated peat vs. unturbated peat soils (Palmer and Horn, 2012).2015 July 21, Christopher R. Penton et al., “Denitrifying and diazotrophic community responses to artificial warming in permafrost and tallgrass prairie soils”, in Frontiers in Microbiology, volume...

permafrost meaning in Arabic, Malay and Indonesian

permafrost in Arabic

permanently frozen ground
تُربَةُ صَقِيعِيّة turba ṣaqīʕiyya

permafrost in Malay

permanently frozen ground
ibun abadi

permafrost in Indonesian

permanently frozen ground
ibun abadi

Examples of permafrost in a sentence

  • Drunken trees leaning in random directions are often found in spruce forests where discontinuous permafrost has melted.
  • Cryosequestration in permafrost has helped limit the amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere from soil.
  • All of the houses in Nunavut must be built on stilts because the permafrost makes it impossible to sink foundations.

All 10 example sentences with permafrost

Forms of permafrost

pluralpermafrosts

Origin of permafrost

From perma- + frost.

Words formed from permafrost

Questions about permafrost

What does permafrost mean?
Permafrost means permanently frozen ground, or a specific layer thereof.
What is permafrost in Arabic?
Permafrost in Arabic is تُربَةُ صَقِيعِيّة (turba ṣaqīʕiyya). See Permafrost meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is permafrost?
Permafrost is a noun.
How do you pronounce permafrost?
Permafrost is pronounced /ˈpɜːməˌfɹɔst/ (UK).
What is the plural of permafrost?
The plural of permafrost is permafrosts.

Words near permafrost in the dictionary

  1. permadied
  2. permadies
  3. permadrunk
  4. permadying
  5. permafree
  6. permafrost
  7. permafrosted
  8. permafrosts
  9. permafrown
  10. permafrowns
  11. permafrozen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: permafrost (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-permafrost.wav.

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