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It is also known as: abbing ( British slang), rappeling (or rappelling), rapping ( American slang), roping down, roping, seiling or jumping ( Australian slang), snapling, snappling or snappeling ( Israeli slang).

Abseiling is used in a number of applications, including:

• Rock climbers returning to the base of a climb or to a point where they then try a new route.
• Recreational abseilers, who return to the top of the line by track, stairs or other methods and abseil again.
• Recreational canyoners, who travel down mountainous watercourses where waterfalls or cliffs may need to be descended and simply jumping is too dangerous or impossible.
• Recreational caving, where underground pitches are accessed using this method.
• Industrial/Commercial workers, who may use abseiling techniques to access parts of structures or buildings so as to perform maintenance, cleaning or construction. (eg window cleaners, railway scalers, quarry workers, etc.)
• Military applications, such as rapid deployment from helicopters or access to buildings as part of raids, etc.
• Confined spaces access, such as investigating ballast tanks and other areas of ships.
• Rescue applications, such as accessing injured people or accident sites (vehicle or aircraft) and extracting the casualty using abseiling techniques.

The majority of abseiling is done using specially designed devices called descenders which allow the abseiler to connect themselves to the rope and control their rate of descent (through adjusting the level of friction applied to the rope by the device).