Floe or flow?

Photo by Marcus Löfvenberg on Unsplash

In my post about spring breakup, I referred to floating slabs of ice as

ice floes

One occasionally sees this misspelled 

ice flows

"Floe" is a surprisingly recent word in English, the first evidence dating only from 1817. It probably comes from Norse flo layer, level piece. I do not know what they were called before the 19th century.

In Newfoundland and the Canadian north, the term "ice pan" is also used. 

"Flow", on the other hand, dates back to Anglo-Saxon times as a verb and to the 15th century as a noun, and has not really changed in meaning over that time.

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