According to Cruden (2003), the term "landslide" was first recorded in 1838 by J.D. Dana. Varnes (1958) used "landslide" in the title of his well-known paper but subsequently abandoned the term in favor of "slope" in the updated iteration (see Varnes, 1978). Varnes (1978, p. 11) states that the reason for the change is that "improvements in technical communication require a deliberate and sustained effort to increase the precision associated with the meaning of words, and therefore the term slide will not be used to refer to movements that do not include sliding." Later, Cruden (1991, p. 28) suggested that a landslide is "the movement of a mass of rock, earth or debris down a slope" and is intended for informal, non-technical use. Several other definitions have been suggested; however, Shanmugam (2015) notes that the term "landslide" lacks conceptual clarity. Nevertheless, the term "landslide" remains entrenched in the literature and, with each scientific discipline using its own nomenclatural scheme, it means different things to different groups (Shanmugam, 2015).
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