glacier [M18th] Glacier was borrowed, via French glacier, from a local French dialect word. This goes back to Latin glacies ‘ice’, which itself goes back to the same Indo-European root as *cold. Glacial [M17th] is earlier, and is again a borrowing of a French word which goes back to the same Latin source. Initially it was used literally to mean ‘icy’, and did not come to mean ‘extremely slow, progressing very slowly’ until the early 20th century. Also borrowed directly from French is glacé [M19th] from the French for ‘iced’, originally used for many things with a shiny finish such as silk or leather, now most commonly used of fruit such as strawberries covered with sugar, or for a type of icing.