Word.ws English Dictionary

stillstand

stillstand noun: a period of time during which the terminus of a glacier remains stationary.

Noun

stillstand (plural stillstands)

  1. A period of time during which the terminus of a glacier remains stationary.
    • A useful exercise may be to calculate the basin-wide deglacial erosion rate for the Jakobshavn catchment area using the volume of glacimarine sediments deposited in front of the fjord-mouth sill (29.2 km3) during an 800 year stillstand (Hogan et al., 2012) and a glacial catchment area derived using...2020 January 28, Kelly A. Hogan, Martin Jakobsson, Larry Mayer, Brendan T. Reilly, Anne E. Jennings, Joseph S Stoner, Tove Nielsen, Katrine J. Andresen, Egon Nørmark, Katrien A. Heirman, Elina Kamla...
    • Repeated bathymetric measurements adjacent to the LeConte glacier terminus offer a rare view into the evolution of a morainal bank on interannual time scales during a stillstand, starting immediately after a rapid glacier retreat.2020 September 25, E. F. Eidam, D. A. Sutherland, D Duncan, C. Kienholz, J. M. Amundson, R. J. Motyka, “Morainal Bank Evolution and Impact on Terminus Dynamics During a Tidewater Glacier Stillstand”...
  2. A period of geologic time during which eustatic sea level stays apparently constant, relative to adjacent periods of geologic time, neither characterized by transgression, nor regression.
    • A relative stillstand of sea level is an apparently constant position of sea level with respect to the underlying initial surface of deposition, and is indicated by coastal toplap. It may result if both sea level and the underlying initial surface of deposition actually remain stationary, or if...1977, Peter R. Vail, Robert M. Jr. Mitchum, Steve Thompson, III, “Seismic Stratigraphy and Global Changes of Sea Level, Part 3: Relative Changes of Sea Level from Coastal Onlap” (chapter 5), in...
    • More generally, regressive sedimentary episodes often correlate with widespread stratigraphic gaps implying erosion or non-deposition. Such facts imply a sea-level fall rather than a stillstand combined with sedimentary infill. Without such periodic falls it is difficult to understand why the...1978, A. Hallam, “Eustatic cycles in the Jurassic”, in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, volume 23, Amsterdam: Elsevier, →DOI, archived from the original on 11 Apr 2024, pages 1-32
  3. (obsolete) A standstill.
    • As with the tide, swell'd up unto its height ,
      That makes a still-stand, running neither wayc. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...

Verb

stillstand (third-person singular simple present stillstands, present participle stillstanding, simple past and past participle stillstanded)

  1. To cease in either glacial advance or retreat.
    • It is tempting in these circumstances to look for the 'smoking gun'-a mechanism whereby glaciers from both the local Cairngorm ice cap, and the much larger Scottish Ice Sheet could stillstand, or even readvance for a period of 1 kyr, during deglaciation.2005 October 25, Jeremy Everest, P. Kubik, “The deglaciation of eastern Scotland: cosmogenic ¹⁰Be evidence for a Lateglacial stillstand”, in Journal of Quaternary Science, volume 2, number 1, Wiley...
    • The base of the stratigraphic successions consists of outwash fan deposits emplaced in the early deglaciation when ice margin stillstanded immediately beyond the depositional area.2016 April, Pierre Dietrich, Jean-François Ghienne, Alexandre Normandeau, Patrick Lajeunesse, “Proglacial deltaic landforms and stratigraphic architecture as a proxy for reconstructing past ice-sheet...

Examples of stillstand in a sentence

  • A relative stillstand of sea level is an apparently constant position of sea level with respect to the underlying initial surface of deposition, and is indicated by coastal toplap.1977, Peter R. Vail, Robert M. Jr. Mitchum, Steve Thompson, III, “Seismic Stratigraphy and Global Changes of Sea Level, Part 3: Relative...
  • Such facts imply a sea-level fall rather than a stillstand combined with sedimentary infill.1978, A. Hallam, “Eustatic cycles in the Jurassic”, in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, volume 23, Amsterdam: Elsevier...
  • Ice-contact depositional systems formed when the LIS was stillstanding along the Québec North Shore.2017 December 5, Pierre Dietrich, Jean-François Ghienne, Alexandre Normandeau, Patrick Lajeunesse, “Reconstructing ice-margin retreat using...

Forms of stillstand

Noun
pluralstillstands
Verb
third-person singular presentstillstands
present participlestillstanding
past participlestillstanded
paststillstanded

Origin of stillstand

From still + stand.

Questions about stillstand

What does stillstand mean?
Stillstand means a period of time during which the terminus of a glacier remains stationary.
How do you use stillstand in a sentence?
A relative stillstand of sea level is an apparently constant position of sea level with respect to the underlying initial surface of deposition, and is indicated by coastal toplap.
What part of speech is stillstand?
Stillstand can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of stillstand?
The plural of stillstand is stillstands.

Words near stillstand in the dictionary

  1. stillsome
  2. Stillson
  3. Stillson wrench
  4. Stillson wrenches
  5. Stillsons
  6. stillstand
  7. stillstanding
  8. stillstands
  9. stillth
  10. Stillwaggon
  11. Stillwagon

Source and license

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