Word of the Day

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

Gelid comes from Latin gelidus, from gelu, “frost, cold.”