ice age

noun

1

: a time of widespread glaciation

2

capitalized I&A : the Pleistocene glacial epoch

Example Sentences

changes that occurred during the last ice age

Recent Examples on the Web

Sixteen thousand years ago, the river sat in an ice-free corridor inside a glacial amphitheater left by the tailend of an ice age. —Bymike Price, science.org, 23 Dec. 2022

But experts say the ferocity and scale of this downturn could end up leading to more of an ice age. —Julian Mark And Gerrit De Vynck, Anchorage Daily News, 19 Dec. 2022

A long time ago Scientists in Denmark have found the world’s oldest DNA sequences in sediment from the ice age. —Ashley Strickland, CNN, 10 Dec. 2022

Meanwhile, greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels altered climate, globalizing a fire crisis into a fire epoch, in which humanity’s combustion practices were creating the pyric equivalent of an ice age. —Stephen Pyne, WSJ, 12 Dec. 2020

But at the same time, downward movement of the seafloor (a relic from the ice age) had the opposite effect, bringing in water to fill the deepened basin. —Scott K. Johnson, Ars Technica, 19 Aug. 2020

Around 12,000 years ago, an ice age was rapidly coming to a close, bringing a spate of climatic changes and natural disasters to the region, Finch tells Science. —Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Feb. 2020

Mars emerged from its most recent ice age about 400,000 years ago. —David Rothery, Discover Magazine, 22 Aug. 2017

The climate at the time — before the ice sheets advanced at the start of the last ice age around 100,000 to 25,000 years ago — would have been similar to today’s conditions. —Katie Hunt, CNN, 2 Feb. 2023

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Word History

First Known Use

1855, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

ice age

noun

1

: a time of widespread glaciation

2

capitalized I&A : the most recent such period in the earth's past