ice cream
Pluralice creams (some meanings)
- 1A frozen dessert made from sweetened cream or a similar mixture, usually flavored.
We had warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
The shop on the corner makes its own ice cream in more than thirty flavors.
Note
The name began as iced cream. Said quickly, the -d of iced disappears before the consonants that follow, and that spoken shortening became the written word, the same slip that gives mash potato for mashed potato. As a substance it is uncountable (some ice cream, a scoop of ice cream); counting it switches to a single serving.
- 2A single serving of ice cream, whether on a stick, in a cup, or in a wafer cone.
The kids each got an ice cream from the truck after the game.
We bought three ice creams and ate them on the boardwalk.
Less common meaning
- 3The drug methamphetamine.
Practice
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Origin
A fixed form of a reduced pronunciation of iced cream, with the -d regularly lost before a cluster of consonants; from iced + cream. Compare mash potato.