talus
1 Americannoun
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tali
plural
noun
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taluses
plural
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a slope.
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Geology. a sloping mass of rocky fragments at the base of a cliff.
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Fortification. the slope of the face of a work.
noun
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geology another name for scree
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fortifications the sloping side of a wall
noun
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taluses
plural
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Rock fragments that have accumulated at the base of a cliff or slope.
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◆ The concave slope formed by such an accumulation of rock fragments is called a talus slope.
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tali
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of talus1
First recorded in 1685–95, talus is from the Latin word tālus ankle, anklebone, die. See tassel
Origin of talus2
1635–45; < French: pseudo-learned alteration of Old French talu slope < Latin talūtium gold-bearing slope or talus ( Vulgar Latin: slope), perhaps of Iberian origin
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.
See Examples For:
Surgeons removed her talus bone, which forms part of the ankle joint, after she developed an infection that prevented doctors from using metal implants.
From BBC ● May 20, 2026
Woods disclosed the surgery on Twitter and said it was a subtalar fusion procedure to address post-traumatic arthritis from when he broke his talus bone in February 2021.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
The first four days featured very limited access points and the entire route required the “North Cascades’ finest bushwhacking,” glacier travel, snowfields, scree, boulder and talus fields, and scrambling.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 1, 2022
A little past the halfway mark, the trail leaves the forest and climbs a talus slope, offering views of Whitehorse Mountain and Three Fingers.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 31, 2022
It led through a vast talus field and then, a mile or so farther on, into woods.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
A tali was brought out piled with boiled ducks’ eggs, crisply fried pooris, dal, rice, curries, chapatis, mango chutney, and many kinds of sweets.
From "Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan
The giraffe was a tali drill that had been brought to the village by the two men who had visited earlier.
From "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park
Where is the American, who will not indignantly say, in the language of a Roman writer, "Non tali auxilio nec defensoribtis istis."
From Auricular Confession and Popish Nunneries Volumes I. and II., Complete by William Hogan
When a person threw the tali, he often invoked either a god or his mistress.
From The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims Volume II (of II) by Andrew Steinmetz
The worst throw was called canis—three aces in tesseræ, and four aces in tali.
From The Browning Cyclop?dia A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning by Edward Berdoe
As recently as 10,000 years ago, bowl-like cirques in the park's mountains were sculpted by glaciers, which left in their wake gray carpets of rock known as taluses.
From Time Magazine Archive
The cottages were thatched and claywashed, and while some of them had a couple of strides of garden in front, others rose from little taluses of blown sand.
From Mushroom Town by Oliver Onions
A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases.
From The Mountains of California by John Muir
It is here that an overhanging and tip-tilted horn, a good sea-mark for Hatiheu, bursts naked from the verdure of the climbing forest, and breaks down shoreward in steep taluses and cliffs.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson
The divide on the left towered up with rugged majesty, reddish in color, and split into gigantic irregular terraces, the taluses of which were all crowded with dense chaparral growths.
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.
