Definition of "piton" [pi•ton]

• A metal spike fitted at one end with an eye for securing a rope and driven into rock or ice as a support in mountain climbing. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Trailing behind the piton was a microthin line of duranium cable."
• "Grias neuberthii, known as the piton tree, is a large tree native to the western Amazonian rainforest (Ecuador, Columbia and Peru)."
• "Soon after the school opened, I signed up and learned how to belay and rappel, and about the play of rock climbing on the senses: the clink of the hammer on a piton, the warmth of the sunlit granite under my hand, the radiant clouds sailing overhead."