In British English, abseiling (from the German abseilen, "to rope down") is the process of descending on a fixed rope. In American English, this is known as rappeling or by the slang term rapping. It is occasionally known as roping down too.
Abseiling is generally undertaken by rock climbers to return to the base of a climb after its successful completion. Although it is possible to abseil without the use of any special equipment, it is more common to use a device known as a descender. A number of different designs exist but the purpose of a descender is to allow the abseiler to control to amount of friction on the rope and hence the speed of descent.
