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Glite Dictionary
🏔️ First-try success 🏔️ To climb first-try 🏔️ First-try climb
to onsight

to onsight

1 9.6
To climb a route successfully on the first try without trying it before
  • verb
  • Jargon
: hacer a vista
  • She was thrilled to learn that she had onsighted the most difficult route in the climbing gym on her very first try.

Examples

  • With just a quick glance at the wall, he onsighted the tricky route, impressing everyone watching.

  • Based on Ondra's scorecard comments about Thug Life (which he onsighted) being chipped, it seems unlikely he would devote much effort to the extension.

    Blog text (3)

  • After weeks of training, he finally onsighted the challenging rock face during the competition.

Synonyms

on the first try
vsto onsight
8 3.1

Succeeding the first time you try something

is specific to climbing and requires no prior practice or information

Surface Forms

onsight infinitive
onsighted past
onsighted past participle
onsighting present participle
onsights third person singular

Morphology

onsight = sight (semi-transparent) = on + sight

The word is built from the free words 'on' and 'sight', but the climbing sense is specialized and not fully predictable from the parts alone. [Postprocessing: moved 'on' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Onsight comes from on + sight, meaning 'at first sight'. So to onsight a route is to climb it successfully on your first attempt, immediately after you see it and without prior practice.