English

Starr Nunatak, on the coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica.

Alternative forms

• nunataq

Noun

nunatak ‎(plural nunataks or nunataker)

1. A mountain top or rocky element of a ridge that is surrounded by glacial ice but is not covered by ice; a peak protruding from the surface ice sheet.
   • 1922, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913, Volume 2, Constable and Company Ltd. (1922), page 365:

     We made for a slope close to the end of the island or nunatak, where Shackleton must have got up also; it is obviously the only place when you look at it from a commanding rise.

   • 2008, Andrea M. J. Coronato, Fernando Coronato, Elizabeth Mazzoni, & Miriam Vásquez, "The Physical Geography of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego", in The Late Cenozoic of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (ed. J. Rabassa), Elsevier (2008), ISBN 9780444529541, page 45:

     Only a few lichens and mosses colonize the rocky walls of cirques and nunataks.

   • 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 155:

     The peak in whose lee you have chosen to set up your command post is far too regular in shape to be the nunatak you imagine it.

Translations

See also

• monadnock

Anagrams

• Kuantan