Meanings
- A retreating glacier in Antarctica.
Scientists have known for years that the Thwaites glacier is the soft underbelly of the Antarctic ice sheet, and first found that it was unstable decades ago.
2014 May 12, Suzanne Goldenberg, “Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn”, in The Guardian1 more example
In 2014 scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tracked the movements of the glaciers using satellite measurements and computer models. They determined that the largest mass of ice, Thwaites Glacier, might disappear completely in two hundred years.
2015, Stuart A. Kallen, Running Dry, Twenty-First Century Books, →ISBN, page 43Synonyms: Doomsday Glacier, Thwaites
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounA retreating glacier in Antarctica.
Origin
From the surname Thwaites; coined in 1967 as an homage to glaciologist Fredrik Thwaites (1883–1961).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Thwaites Glacier. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Thwaites%20Glacier
“Thwaites Glacier.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Thwaites%20Glacier. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Thwaites Glacier,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Thwaites%20Glacier.
Source: Thwaites Glacier on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.