word of the day: verglas

The word of the day is verglas:

Etymology:  French, < verre verre n. + glas (modern French glace ) ice: see glace n.¹

n. the phenomenon of rain freezing as it falls and forming a glassy coating on the ground, trees, etc.
 (OED)


"In 2008, he climbed the Nordwand in two hours and forty-seven minutes - less time than it takes to watch 'Cloud Atlas'.  The style was pure, too: he waited until a storm had left fresh ice and covered old tracks, and he used no ropes or protection of any kind - just crampons and ice axes, in a technique called dry-tooling.  Later, he repeated the climb for a film crew, doing pitches over and over, waiting for the setup of each shot, and the footage of him dry-tooling verglas, and running up near-vertical snowfields, where one mistake could mean a mile-long plunge, brought him international renown."

 - Nick Paumgarten, "The manic mountain: Ueli Steck and the clash on Everest", 3 June 2013 The New Yorker

word of the day: serac

The word of the day is serac:

Etymology:  < Swiss-French sérac, originally the name of a kind of white cheese; the transferred application was doubtless suggested by similitude of form. (OED)


"By the end of the month, they were established at Camp 2, at 21,300 feet, beyond the top of the Khumbu Icefall, a tumbling portion of the Khumbu Glacier mined with crevasses and seracs."

 - Nick Paumgarten, "The manic mountain: Ueli Steck and the clash on Everest", 3 June 2013 The New Yorker