thaw-drop

English

Noun

thaw-drop (plural thaw-drops)

1. A drop of water formed by melting snow or ice.
   • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 3, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC:

     When she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch——it was a very frosty day——I felt so miserable and self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!

   • 1880, Cecilia Findlay, Cross purposes:

     Down the steep bank led the narrow pathway, rendered exceeding slippery by the freezing of thaw-drops from the overhanging trees.

   • 1928, Sherard Vines, Humours unreconciled: a tale of modern Japan, page 69:

     From a rhombus of saffron light in the middle distance the notes of a bamboo flute, cool and blue as the thaw-drops on the edge of a glacier, mournful and languishing crotchets, crept toward them on the gently stirring air.

   • 1966, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, Quartet, page 75:

     I was rewarded at last, upon choosing one, by the sight of what might be described as the dot of an exclamation mark leaving its ordinary position to glide down very fast - a jot faster than the thaw-drop it raced.