MORAINE

[Dr. Goodword]

• moraine •

Pronunciation: mê-rayn • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A mound or ridge of rocks, earth, and rubble deposited by a glacier. 2. A flower bed for Alpine plantings, formed by pouring soil or other rooting material over a bed of rocks for drainage.

Notes: Today's Good Word offers two adjectives to choose from: morainic or morainal, both describing any relation to moraines, as morainal deposits or morainic lakes.

In Play: Moraines left by a melted icecap are called terminal moraines: "The Lost Lakes of Pennsylvania are a large, pristine remnant of natural forests and wetlands on Pennsylvania's terminal moraine, left here 10,000 years ago by North America's last great glacier." (Interstate 80 generally follows this terminal moraine across Pennsylvania.) The other sense of today's word is useful in the garden, "I've built a small moraine in my rock garden to nurture a little pipsissewa, snowberry, Dutchman's breeches, and a bit of trailing arbutus."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from French moraine, which descended from morena "mound of earth", from Provençal morre "muzzle". The Provençal word comes from a projected Vulgar Latin word, *murrum, about which nothing is known other than it could have existed. (Today's Good Geological Word comes to us from Patricia Castellanos, to whom we owe a mound of rubble-free gratitude.)

[Slava]

I often confuse this one with the other glacial term common to these parts: Drumlin.

The moraine is whats left at the leading edge of the glacier, whereas a drumlin is a formation left as it's going along. They help show the direction of the glacier.

I'm curious, just what is a morainic lake? The Finger Lakes in Upstate NY are glacially formed, but very, very far from morainic. Where would we find such a creature?

[skinem]

I'm curious, just what is a morainic lake? The Finger Lakes in Upstate NY are glacially formed, but very, very far from morainic. Where would we find such a creature?

You'll find quite a few in the Cascades of Washington and Oregon.

Usually smaller lakes between the moraine (or amongst it, as moraines can be huge) and the remaining glacier or where the glacier was.