A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
975 entries
flatiron
A triangular slab of rock tilted steeply against a mountainside, its broad base at the bottom and its point at the top — resembling the shape of an old flat iron used for pressing clothes. Flatirons form when a resistant layer of rock (usually sandstone) is tilted steeply by tectonic uplift and then eroded into isolated triangular remnants. The Flatirons above Boulder, Colorado, are the iconic example.
Etymology
Compound of “flat” + “iron.”