calving
The process by which chunks of ice break off the front of a glacier or ice shelf and fall into the water as icebergs. Calving is sudden and violent — a thunderous crack, a slab of ice the size of a building tilting forward, the splash, the wave. It is the most dramatic way a glacier loses mass, and in a warming world, the most consequential.
Etymology
By analogy with the birthing of a calf — the glacier gives birth to an iceberg. The metaphor is ancient and surprisingly tender for something so destructive.
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