alpenstock
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of alpenstock
1820–30; < German, equivalent to Alpen Alps + Stock staff
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Brooks himself reads as the opposite of acrophobic: scaling the icy pinnacles of Hollywood without anything more than a pang of self-doubt, using humor as his alpenstock.
From New York Times • Dec. 1, 2021
Has no intention, as things stand, of reaching for his alpenstock.
From Time Magazine Archive
Piled in a corner, his hiking gear—boots, alpenstock, leather knapsack.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Following closely behind them perhaps there would have strode a professional pilgrim, supporting himself on a stout knobbed staff shod like an alpenstock and weighed down with blessed medals, relics, shells, vernicles and so forth.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
Isaline put me up a nice little light lunch in my knapsack, and insisted upon seeing that my alpenstock was firmly shod, and my pedestrian boots in due climbing order.
From The Beckoning Hand and Other Stories by Allen, Grant
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
