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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
piton
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But he was on a straight rock surface that required pitons, which he did not have.
▪ Now, somehow holding a piton with his useless hand, he had to hammer it into the rock with the other.
▪ Respect established climbing traditions in ethical matters such as the use of chalk, pitons, bolts etc.
▪ The secret weapon of the ascensionists, unlocking the door to Bosigran's hardest faces, were the hammer and piton.
▪ These may be quick direct belays on situ pitons or round spikes or flakes.
▪ With cords and pitons they anchored him to the rock.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
piton

piton \pi"ton\ (p[=e]"t[o^]n), n. (Mountain Climbing) A metal spike having a sharpened point on one end, and a hole through which a rope can be passed on the other; it is driven into the face of a rock cliff during climbing, and used as an anchor point for a rope.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
piton

1898, from French piton "hook, peak of a mountain, piton, eyebolt," in Old French "nail, hook," from Vulgar Latin root *pitt- "point, peak" [Barnhart].

Wiktionary
piton

n. a spike, wedge, or peg that is driven into a rock or ice surface as a support (as for a mountain climber) vb. (context climbing English) to put pitons into a rock/ice to facilitate climbing

WordNet
piton

n. a metal spike with a hole for a rope; mountaineers drive it into ice or rock to use as a hold

Wikipedia
Piton

In climbing, a piton (; also called a pin or peg) is a metal spike (usually steel) that is driven into a crack or seam in the rock with a hammer, and which acts as an anchor to protect the climber against the consequences of a fall, or to assist progress in aid climbing. Pitons are equipped with an eye hole or a ring to which a carabiner is attached; the carabiner can then be directly or indirectly attached to a climbing rope.

Pitons were the original form of protection and are still used where there is no alternative. Repeated hammering and extraction of pitons damages the rock, and climbers who subscribe to the clean climbing ethic avoid their use as much as possible. With the popularization of clean climbing in the 1970s, pitons were largely replaced by faster and easier-to-use clean protection, such as nuts and camming devices. Pitons are still found in place (as 'fixed' pitons) on some established free climbing routes in places where nuts or cams do not work; and are used on some hard aid climbs.

Piton (beer)

Piton is a Pilsner beer brand from the island of Saint Lucia, brewed by Windward & Leeward Brewing Limited, which is owned by Heineken. The beer was named for the Gros Piton and Petit Piton mountains on the island. It was first brewed on October 7, 1992.

Usage examples of "piton".

Not having driven one piton, he was going to attempt a five-day climb up the nearly sheer western counterfort.

It grew more and more difficult, and he often had to lay in protection, driving a piton into a crack of the firm granite.

He bent carefully to his equipment sling, replaced the used piton, and took up a shorter one.

The shorter piton went to its eye in five hammer strokes and he could do nothing to dislodge it.

Anchoring two pitons into the rock as solidly as he could, he clipped an oval carabiner on the bottom piton, put a safety line on the top one, and lowered himself about sixty feet down the two ropes.

He feared that the piton to which he was anchored would not take the strain, and would pull out.

Scot gestured toward where Nick had wisely chosen a new location in the rock crevice in which to drive a piton, so as not to disturb the area Harvath had pointed out earlier.

Somehow it had gotten caught on a piton and, with the downward weight of his body, was threatening to cut off all of his oxygen and strangle him.

He pulled out his pressure-gun, fired a piton into the rockwall, looped his rope around it.

West saw the rope go slack, now only hanging from its piton at his end.

Nodding ruefully, I pull a piton gun from my pack and harpoon the planet.

Randi fires a piton in too, clips on, then clips another line between her belt and mine.

Working with her right hand, she sets one piton and then another, hammering them in with her fist.

Quickly Randi connects the new line to the line that still connects them, slack now, and loops it around the piton she has just set.

Thirty meters below her, Ed bounces as the line pulls taut and pops the piton out of the wall in another shower of debris.