Abseiled

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To move downwards from a high place by using a rope and securing oneself with equipment designed for safety
2. The method of descending a vertical drop while being attached to a rope for protection against falls
3. To descend from an elevated position by employing a rope system for safety while being securely harnessed

Etymology: Abseiling was a mountaineering technique that let climbers descend steep rock faces by sliding down a doubled rope, anchored above and recovered from below. The English word is simply the German "abseilen", made from "ab", meaning "down" or "off", and "Seil", meaning "rope". Borrowed whole from German, it kept its literal sense of going down a rope, and the past forms "abseiled" follow the regular English pattern for a verb taken into the language from another tongue. The method itself grew out of the early history of climbing in the Alps, where rope descents were needed long before the word arrived in English. Climbers who could not go back up the way they had come relied on it to retreat from cliffs, and the German term came with the technique and its vocabulary.

Synonyms: rappelled, descended