Brinicle

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A formation of frozen brine, occurring beneath sea ice and analogous to a stalactite.

Etymology

Blend of brine + icicle, though given that icicle is a pleonastic compound of ice + ickle, brinicle could be surface-analysed as brine + ickle.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.