Interglacial
adj, noun
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The relatively warm period between glacial periods.
"The climatic recession which produced Britain's last glaciers came rapidly to an end about 10,000 bp, as temperatures rose during the end of the protocratic phase of the present interglacial."
Adjective
- 1 Occurring between glaciations (colloquially known as ice ages). not-comparable
"Palaeoenvironmental evidence from northwest Europe indicates that the oligocratic phase of the interglacial cycle (Fig. 3.1) had begun by ca. 5K years BP."
Example
More examples"Carrie Morrill of the National Climatic Data Center explains, "You'd have to go back to the last interglacial about 125,000 years ago to find temperatures significantly higher than temperatures of today.""
Etymology
From inter- + glacial.
Related phrases
More for "interglacial"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.