abseil

verb

ab·​seil ˈab-ˌsāl 

-ˌsī(-ə)l

abseiled; abseiling; abseils

intransitive verb

chiefly British

: to descend (as from a cliff) by sliding down a rope passed under one thigh, across the body, and over the opposite shoulder or through a special friction device : rappel

I was doing the traverse solo and abseiled from some old slings on the way down; the buggers broke on me and I fell about fifty feet.

—Hamish MacInnes, quoted in I Chose to Climb

abseil noun

Examples of abseil in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Tom Cruise thrilled fans at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony by abseiling from the roof of the Stade de France. — Andreas Wiseman, Deadline, 14 July 2026

Other videos showing Cuba’s aged military training are tougher to explain —for example, special forces abseiling in tandem down a tower clad with sheet metal at Playa Baracoa, a military base on the outskirts of Havana. — Avery Schmitz, CNN Money, 24 June 2026

What to read next The highlight of the cruise for many is a pirate party on the ship’s main deck, complete with Captain Jack Sparrow abseiling from the funnel. — Helen Wright, TheWeek, 11 Mar. 2026

The stakes couldn’t be higher, as the men abseil, climb and hike into the heart of the jungle. — Los Angeles Times, 4 Mar. 2026

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from German abseilen "to lower by a rope," (as a reflexive verb, "to descend by a rope"), verbal derivative from ab- "down, from" (going back to Old High German ab, aba, preposition) + Seil "rope," going back to Old High German seil, going back to Germanic *saila-, neuter noun, akin to Old Saxon sēl "rope," and with gender/stem variation, to Old English sāl, "rope," Old Norse seil, Gothic insailjan "to lower by rope"; Germanic *saila-, etc., a nominal derivative from Indo-European *seh₂(i̯̯)- — more at of entry 1, sinew entry 1

First Known Use

1941, in the meaning defined above