talus
1 Americannoun
noun
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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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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.
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
The yellow bull grazed in open view, but the speckled cows stayed in the juniper, listening like deer to Tayo’s approach, their spotted hides blending into the sandy talus of the big mesa.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
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
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
Well might the reformers, who knew that victory was to be obtained, not by burrowing under the ground, but by facing the perils of the battle-field, exclaim: Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis Tempus eget.
From History of the Rise of the Huguenots Vol. 1 by Baird, Henry Martyn
In playing, they used three tesserae and four tali, which were all put into a box wider below than above, and being shaken, were thrown out upon the gaming-board or table.
From The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 02: Augustus by Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius
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 Hogan, William
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
Others are obliterated by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may be termed accidental.
From The Mountains of California by Muir, John
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 Onions, Oliver
No other tree in the Sierra seems so much at home on earthquake taluses and many of these huge boulder-slopes are almost exclusively occupied by it.
From The Yosemite by Muir, John
The slopes or taluses represent the softer rock, the vertical walls the harder layers.
From Time and Change by Burroughs, John
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.
