Word of the Day

Thursday, March 03, 2005

gelid

\JEL-id\ , adjective;

Extremely cold; icy.

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Quotes:

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

Origin:

Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, "frost, cold."