Word.ws English Dictionary

abseiling

abseiling is the present participle and gerund of abseil.

Meaning of abseil

Verb

abseil (third-person singular simple present abseils, present participle abseiling, simple past and past participle abseiled)

  1. (intransitive) To descend a steep or vertical drop using a rope with a mechanical friction device or (classic abseil) by wrapping the rope around the body.
    • Although only five miles north of Winchester, the tunnel is in a rural location with no road access. Contractors were only able to reach the site after cutting through thick vegetation and abseiling down the slope on ropes.2020 September 9, Paul Clifton, “Heavy rainfall causes landslip in Hampshire”, in Rail, page 11
    Synonyms:
    rappel

See all 2 meanings of abseil

Noun

abseiling (countable and uncountable, plural abseilings)

  1. The process or act of abseiling.
    • He pictured the abseiling, literally a flight down the mountain on the doubled cord of his long rope, and he thought that those hours speeding down the cliffs would be the finest of his life.1977, The New Yorker, page 33
    • Greenpeace offers its supporters the chance to fund brave and glamorous adventures (inflatables pitted against whalers; abseilings against smokestacks), and in exchange to wear something very like the medieval pilgrim's token: to put a rainbow sticker in their car windows.1995, New Scientist - Volume 145, page 40

Forms of abseiling

pluralabseilings

Questions about abseiling

What does abseiling mean?
Abseiling means the process or act of abseiling.
What is abseiling the present participle and gerund of?
Abseiling is the present participle and gerund of abseil.
What part of speech is abseiling?
Abseiling is a noun.
What is the plural of abseiling?
The plural of abseiling is abseilings.

Words near abseiling in the dictionary

  1. Absecon Island
  2. abseil
  3. abseiled
  4. abseiler
  5. abseilers
  6. abseiling
  7. abseilings
  8. abseils
  9. absement
  10. absements
  11. absence

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: abseiling (page history and authors); abseil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “abseiling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/abseiling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.