Anyone need a new word?

[muckefuck]

The other night, I had a someone unsettling dream about a violent rivalry between neighbours. At one point, one was standing on a height and the other was climbing a steep wall to get at him. He had both hands over the top and was trying to hoist himself up. His opponent called this an attempt at "gleasing" (rhymes with "sleazing", not "leasing").

Upon waking, I resolved to look this up in the OED to see if it existed, but I didn't get around to it until today. glease is a variant spelling of the obsolete/dialectal verb glace meaning "To glance, glide; to move lightly or quickly". That's half the question answered; the other half is, is there already a verb in place which denotes the action described above? I'm especially looking at you spelunkers and rock climbers, who have verbs for all sorts of movements the rest of us don't perform often enough to name (like "chimneying").

Comments

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I have never used, nor heard used in the climbing crowds I sometimes hang with, the word "gleasing".

Re:

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I may have asked the question badly. What I'm trying to find out is if they use any other word with a meaning similar to that which I gave the made-up word "gleasing" in my dream? That is, is there a name for "the action of getting two handholds on a surface above your head and swinging yourself up there without assistance"?

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Ah, whoops. I probably read the question badly. Nothing leaps to mind, but I'll ask my brother, who's more likely to know, anyway.

youthful memories

[carneggy.livejournal.com]

If you mean 'really awkwardly trying to pull your torso up over the lip of a rockface using just your hands/arms already over the edge instead of footholds so you end up sliding on your belly', I've heard it called walrusing or beaching (like a whale) by guys I used to climb with as a youth.

It's a pretty dumb thing to do most times; imagine climbing a ladder onto a roof. Do you make your feet skip the last few rungs that your hands just used, or continue to use those rungs to step up and onto the roof? Same thing with rock-climbing, unless there happens to be some really ideal thing to grab onto at the top combined with the last few handholds being really sucky. (some of the time, the 'ideal thing at the top' is your buddy grabbing you and pulling you up to join him, anyway.)

Re: youthful memories

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

So my neologism doesn't fill a gap in the lexicon after all. Sniff!