Anchor
An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, used to connect a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin "ancora", which itself comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα ("ankura").
Anchor (climbing)
A load-sharing (or load-distributing) anchor is a system consisting of two or more individual anchors which join together at a main anchor point to form an anchoring system. This configuration is a way to introduce redundancy and increase strength, typically for a belay anchor. If assembled correctly, the load will be distributed to each individual anchor, rather than placing all the load on a single anchor point. This decreases the chance that any single anchor point will fail, and, if a point does fail, the other(s) should still be able to hold.