declimb

English

Etymology

de- +‎ climb

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -aɪm

Verb

declimb (third-person singular simple present declimbs, present participle declimbing, simple past and past participle declimbed)

1. (rare, nonstandard) To climb down.
   • 1965, United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on International Finance, Eighty-ninth Congress, First Session, Hearings on Balance of Payments, part 2, page 949:

     It has saddled us with an insoluble puzzle: How to declimb from heights that make us dizzy and that we cannot endure forever without slipping into an incalculable slide that we can [not] arrest with all existing brakes […]

   • 2010, Jane Juska, A Round-Heeled Woman, pages 183–184:

     I had been told that, if the principal really didn't like you, he would assign you five classrooms, one for each period and each on different floors, so that you might find yourself climbing and declimbing four flights of stairs, plus descending to the half basement, whose windows were half-covered with snow during the winter and tall grass the rest of the time.

Anagrams

• climbed