rappel

Other forms of rappel

plural

rappels·

past tense or participle

rappelled

present participle

rappelling

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about rappel

What does rappel mean?

rappel means "(mountaineering) a descent of a vertical cliff or wall made by using a doubled rope that is fixed to a higher point and wrapped around the body". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in rappel?

rappel has 2 syllables: rap-pel. The stress falls on "rap".

What is another word for rappel?

Close synonyms include abseil, abseil, rope down. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is rappel a common word?

rappel is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.