Word.ws English Dictionary

top-rope

top-rope noun: a rope used for hoisting and lowering a topmast, and for other purposes.

top-rope: a rope used for hoisting and lowering a topmast, and for other purposes
Image: Bastibe, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

top-rope (plural top-ropes)

  1. A rope used for hoisting and lowering a topmast, and for other purposes.
  2. A rope, used for the climber's safety, which runs from a belayer at the foot of a route through one or more carabiners connected to an anchor system at the top of the route and back down to the climber, usually attaching to the climber by means of a harness.

Verb

top-rope (third-person singular simple present top-ropes, present participle top-roping, simple past and past participle top-roped)

  1. To belay from a fixed anchor point above the climber.

Forms of top-rope

Noun
pluraltop-ropes
Verb
third-person singular presenttop-ropes
present participletop-roping
past participletop-roped
pasttop-roped

Questions about top-rope

What does top-rope mean?
Top-rope means a rope used for hoisting and lowering a topmast, and for other purposes.
What part of speech is top-rope?
Top-rope can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of top-rope?
The plural of top-rope is top-ropes.

Words near top-rope in the dictionary

  1. top-posts
  2. top-priority
  3. top-quality
  4. top-ranking
  5. top-rated
  6. top-rope
  7. top-roped
  8. top-roper
  9. top-ropers
  10. top-ropes
  11. top-roping

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: top-rope (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: “top-rope.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/top-rope. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.