So far, we have nobody contributing to the conversation who has ever suggested that one could have multiple on-sight attempts. I've never heard anyone suggest otherwise. You use the word "many." Where are they? If they do exist, then they are simply misusing the word. This is not the fault of the word, it is the fault of the speaker.

Also, saying that you didn't do something cleanly suggests something entirely different than aiding the route. One involves a failure to free climb the route, the other implies that the climber intended on using aid to ascend the route. Who's getting their ego saved? The person using the term is just succinctly describing their attempt to climb the route.

What are we arguing about here?

During the years I was climbing I was never asked how I performed on a climb. Not once. I think we all were out there just to have a great day on the rock.

I must be suboptimal. If this had been the atmosphere in the Gunks I would have been back in the Adirondacks in three months.

To each their own I guess.

I hear ya. When I usually talk about my day I generally just say I climbed something. Inevitably the person I am talking to will ask if I led it or toproped it, and if I did it "clean" meaning without falling or weighting gear. Of course I do understand why they ask this. They just want to understand the context of my climb. Perhaps they want to relate a bad gear placement experience, or a runout experience, or whatever. I don't mind it, but I have had people say that I haven't really climbed it unless I climbed it on lead. That's when I say what you say...to each their own

Rob, that's exactly right.

For me these terms are all about precision of communication - saying (and hearing) exactly what I'm trying to say - and and not a bit about judgment or measuring someone up.

It's only natural, of course, that when I fess up to hanging my way up something, *I* feel dirty; and when I brag about an onsight, I feel proud. But those are my feelings, and I won't assume they're shared by everyone.

But when I hear the same from someone else, I'm not judging them - I'm just getting a clearer picture of their context. I usually leave it up to them to (also) tell me how they felt about it. I'm just listening, but as any listener does, I prefer clear and specific terms as opposed to vague and less meaningful terms.

If someone feels compelled to inform you that you 'failed' ... well, that's another problem entirely.

Did someone just agree with me?? Wow, what a watershed moment in my Gunks.com career!

Don't start crying, RR, it might freeze your eyelids shut! Did that once in a biathlon race, hard to see the big turn coming up.

Yeah, you better watch out Rob, the mean ol' bogey man is out to ruin every one of yer gear grabbin' hang-doggin' got-it-but-not-clean days.

Major problem dude.

Bwahahahahaha...

Rich- You may have a job singing X-mas climbing carols, hmmm, I could see a Santa suit in your future........

"You better watch out,you better NOT SHOUT, you better not pout, I'm telling you why...."

I know the bogey man quite well. He haunts all of my golf games, as well as his brothers double and triple Bogey. The BOOGEY MAN on the other hand..I kick his ass whenever I see him.

A spelling smackdown! Here's what Wikipedia, that unimpeachable source of contemporary knowledge, has to say:

"The bogeyman (also spelled boogyman, bogyman, boogieman, boogey monster) is a legendary ghost-like monster. The bogeyman has no specific appearance and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Bogeyman can be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear."

Please also note that in my newly-assigned role of arbiter of accomplishments, I am the amorphous embodiment of terror, striking irrational fear of failure into the hearts of free-climbing cheaters everywhere.

Be very afraid.

[Linguistic aside: does anyone else find the term "amorphous embodiment" problematic?]