iceberg
Plural: icebergs
Noun
- A large floating mass of ice detached from a glacier.
- a large mass of ice floating at sea; usually broken off of a polar glacier
- lettuce with crisp tightly packed light-green leaves in a firm head
- "iceberg is still the most popular lettuce"
- The seaward end of a glacier.
- A huge mass of ocean-floating ice which has broken off a glacier or ice shelf
- An aloof person.
- An impending disastrous event whose adverse effects are only beginning to show.
- A topic that is more convoluted and fractal than it may seem.
- A topic that is more convoluted and fractal than it may seem.
- A list, infographic, or other enumeration of such a topic and its subcomponents, often ordered into groups sorted by obscurity and bizarreness.
Examples
- Check out the gaming iceberg on this post! There's some really freaky titles there that I've never heard of.
- Do some digging into that politician's past life and associates, and you'll see that the iceberg runs deep.
- His low score was just the tip of the ICEBERG; his opponent had a huge lead.
- The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.
- There's a massive iceberg of increasingly crazy fanfics out there based around those two characters.
- Today we're gonna talk about the Star Wars iceberg.
Origin / Etymology
Partial calque of Dutch ijsberg (compound of ijs (“ice”) + berg (“mountain”)), from Middle Dutch ijsberch. First used to describe a glacier as seen at a distance from a ship then used as a term to describe the floating chunks of ice broken off from such glaciers. Cognate to German Eisberg, Danish isbjerg, Norwegian isberg and Swedish isberg. Figurative senses in reference to the fact that only one-tenth of an iceberg is usually visible above water.
Synonyms
berg, crisphead lettuce, iceberg lettuce
Scrabble Score: 12
iceberg: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordiceberg: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
iceberg: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary