The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pteron \Pte"ron\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. ? a wing.] (Anat.) The region of the skull, in the temporal fossa back of the orbit, where the great wing of the sphenoid, the temporal, the parietal, and the frontal hones approach each other.
Wiktionary
n. (context architecture English) A peristyle raised on a podium, differing from an ordinary peristyle raised only on a stylobate.
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "pteron".
But by the time he had hammered in the fourth pteron, he knew they were in trouble.
Hamaan was already on the second pteron and Sardonyx was readying the lines to go up herself.
He thought he spotted something and, climbing onto the last pteron, he stretched himself to his limit.
Sardonyx was obliged to pull up the last pteron and, as they moved pass it forward to Moichi to reuse.
Then, the eerie sensation passed and he banged in the last pteron, threaded the line and levered himself up through the hole in the chimney.
Once or twice a day they were obliged to break out the pterons and, hooking their safety lines to them, begin a vertical assault.
The way became steeper again and they spent the better part of the day slung in their gear, Moichi hammering pterons through ice and rock.
They had successfully negotiated more than two-thirds of the rift when the pteron on the finger toward which Hamaan was swinging gave way.
After that disconcerting moment when two realities overlapped, the new one rushed in on Moichi and he remembered everything in gory detail: the pteron pulling out of the black ice, him tumbling downward, and Hamaan swinging immediately to grab him around the waist before his head smashed into a buttress of ice.