Tor (rock formation)

A tor is a large, free-standing rock outcrop that rises abruptly out of the otherwise smooth, gentle slopes of a rounded hill summit or ridge crest, and geomorphologists also call the feature a castle koppie or kopje. The term is especially associated with southwest England, where it is used for the high, rocky points of Dartmoor in Devon and Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, often naming the hill itself rather than only the rock outcrop on top of it. Tors form through weathering and erosion acting on a range of rock types, most often granite but also schist, dacite, dolerite, ignimbrite and sandstone, and the outcrops themselves are typically less than five meters high, with the exact process behind their formation varying by climate and local rock. The English word derives from the Old Welsh twrr or tor, meaning a heap or cluster.