Meanings
- A period of cooling (not a true ice age) that followed the Medieval Warm Period and continued from about 1300 to about 1850.
The Little Ice Age that chilled Europe–variously dated from 1250 to 1900 or 1550 to 1850–should, according to past precedents, have snowballed into a full-blown ice age.
2012, Lydia Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne, The Last Lost World, Penguin, →ISBN1 more example
They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic changes.
[2021 July 5, Alice Bell, “Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)”, in The Guardian, retrieved 05 Jul 2021Synonyms: LIA
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounA period of cooling (not a true ice age) that followed the Medieval Warm Period and continued from about 1300 to about 1850.
Origin
From little + ice age, coined by Dutch-American topographer and geologist François E. Matthes in 1939.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Bulgarian Ма́лък ле́дников перио́д
- Ма́лък ле́дников перио́д (Málăk lédnikov periód)period of cooling (not a true ice age) that followed the Medieval Warm Period
Cite this entry
Little Ice Age. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Little%20Ice%20Age
“Little Ice Age.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Little%20Ice%20Age. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Little Ice Age,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Little%20Ice%20Age.
Source: Little Ice Age on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.