Scaling the world’s tallest building

climbI love watching Alain Robert’s amazing climbing adventures in the news. He’s well-known all over the world now for climbing up some of the world’s tallest buildings.

Although lots of people enjoy watching him, he often gets arrested by the police when he gets to the top.

There was an article about Alain Robert’s future plans on the ABC News website today with some interesting climbing vocabulary in it.

The first interesting expression I spotted was ‘to set your sights on something‘. This means to makes something your target or goal. In the same paragraph, the author uses the expression ‘death-defying‘ meaning to succeed in doing something very dangerous without dying.

It’s also mentioned that Robert wants to ‘scale‘ the tower. This means that he wants to climb up it.

Slightly later in the article, the expression ‘bail out‘ is used. We’ve seen the expression ‘bail out’ before on the World of Words already.

The last expression I would like to look at is in the final paragraph. To do something ‘with your bare hands‘ means to do it without any equipment other than your own body.

Has Alain Robert ever climbed any buildings in your country?

Today’s image is by Simon Layfield.