Word of the Day Archive
Monday January 21, 2002
gelid \JEL-id\
, adjective:
Extremely cold; icy.
The weather is gelid on a recent Thursday night--so uninviting that it's hard to imagine anyone venturing out.
-- Letta Tayler, "The Accent's on Brooklyn", Newsday, April 6, 2000
Last January a major crisis arose when the Argentine naval supply ship Bahia Paraiso foundered near an island off the Antarctic Peninsula, creating a diesel-oil spill that inflicted untold damage on the ecosystems clinging to the edges of the icy continent or swimming in its gelid seas.
-- Christopher Redman Paris, "Could anything be more terrible than this silent, windswept immensity?", Time, October 23, 1989
The house was silent, filled with a gelid, wintery hush even as lilac and dogwood leaves brushed darkly against the windowpanes.
-- Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World: A Novel
Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for gelid
