ice-shelf

ice-shelf (plural ice-shelves)

1. Alternative form of ice shelf
   • 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness:

     All planes reached the old base on the eventing of the next day —January 27th—after a swift non-stop flight; and on the 28th we made McMurdo Sound in two laps, the one pause being very brief, and occasioned by a faulty rudder in the furious wind over the ice-shelf after we had cleared the great plateau.

   • 2000, Orson Scott Card, Future On Ice, →ISBN:

     But he found no Alaloi, and he urged his dogs carefully across the crevasses of the Fairleigh ice-shelf, back out onto the sea.

   • 2009, Ranulph Fiennes, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, →ISBN:

     Thunderous roars warned us that the whole ice-shelf had entered a hyperactive phase, causing hitherto safe snow-bridges to collapse all around us into their crevasses.

The hyphenated form is usually used attributively.