aiguille

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a sharp, needle-shaped pinnacle of rock, especially in the Alps

   The climbers watched the sunrise illuminate the granite aiguille above the glacier.

Borrowed in the early nineteenth century from French aiguille, literally 'needle,' from Old French aguille and Late Latin acucula, a diminutive of Latin acus, 'needle.' Mountaineers applied the French word to the narrow, sharply pointed rock towers characteristic of the Alps.

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