Definition of "frostwork" []

• The intricate patterns produced by frost, as on a windowpane. (noun)
• Artificially made ornamental patterns similar to those produced by frost, applied to the surface of metal or glass. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Most of the bubbles popped right away, but a few froze hard and clear with a pattern of frostwork forming from the top down."
• "And as the clergyman gazed, the belief which had so strongly clung to him that the Earl of Etherington and young Valentine Bulmer were the same individual person, melted away like frostwork before the morning sun, and that so completely, that he marvelled at himself for having ever entertained it."
• "And was there frostwork about and thick weather and hice, soon calid, soon frozen, cold on warm but moistly dry, and a boatshaped blanket of bruma air-sighs and hellstohns and flammballs and vodashouts and every — thing to please everybody? —"