Highlights
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Misusing "ice cave" creates terminological chaos
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"Glacier cave" implies a cavity carved directly into ice
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"Iced cave" denotes a rock cavity with perennial ice
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"Former iced cave" classifies caves that have lost their ice deposit
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This scientific taxonomy preserves cultural toponyms
Abstract
The term "ice cave" is deeply entrenched in speleological literature, but it fails to distinguish between two distinct phenomena: voids carved entirely within glacier ice and bedrock cavities hosting secondary perennial ice. This paper highlights the century-long conceptual ambiguity surrounding this nomenclature and proposes a process-oriented taxonomic reform. Based on grammatical, climatic, and cross-linguistic rationales, this paper advocates adopting the participial modifier "iced cave" as a precise alternative to the noun-noun construct "ice cave" for rock-hosted environments. This shift accurately frames subterranean ice as a dynamic secondary infill rather than a structural matrix, aligning English terminology with established practices in other European languages. Furthermore, the concept of the "former iced cave" is introduced to classify cavities that have lost their ice mass due to ongoing climate warming, resolving the oxymoronic conflict of labeling ice-free voids as ice caves. This reform offers researchers a precise, evolutionary framework for classifying the subterranean cryosphere without altering historical geographical toponyms.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/1827-806X.ijs2638
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Barabach, J., 2026. From "ice cave" to "iced cave": a semantic and process-based refinement for rock-hosted caves containing perennial ice. International Journal of Speleology, 55(3), ijs2638. https://doi.org/10.5038/1827-806X.ijs2638
