What does the word carabiners in mountain climbing mean?

Answer 1

Caribiners (also known as karibiners, biners or krabs) are metal clips used to link things together when climbing, ie a rope to an anchor point, a belay plate to a harness or simply to clip equipment securly to a climbers harness.

HMS krabs are most often used by a belayer, or to build secure anchor points for belay, while snapgate and wiregate krabs are often clipped at each end of a sling to form a quickdraw. One end of this clips to the climbers rope, the other end to a piece of protection placed on the rock face. Up to 12 of these may be placed on a standard climbing pitch, in order to stop a climber hitting the ground if they were to take a fall.