the.com/talus

means The ankle bone that sits atop the heel and connects the leg to the foot, transmitting body weight from the shin downward; the word also names the loose pile of rock fragments at the base of a cliff or slope.

from From Latin talus, meaning 'ankle' or 'heelbone' — the very bone the Romans used for their dice-like knucklebone game (the tali were thrown like dice). The geological sense, for sloping rock debris, came later through French talus, 'a slope,' likely picturing the way scree heaps up against a cliff the way an ankle wedges beneath a leg.