hill
/hɪl
/noun
1A naturally raised area of land, not as high or craggy as a mountain.The instructions were to design a simple landscape sketch using a minimum of five to six land forms - hills, mountains, lakes and so on....
- Forests, meadow land, rolling hills and mountains, all populated with small villages, are on the menu.
- The tribes, rightly, are required to show their connections with various rivers, mountains, hills, and land sites.
Synonyms
high ground, rising ground, prominence, eminence, elevation, rise, hillock, mound, mount, knoll, hummock, tor, tump, fell, pike, mesa;
bank, ridge, hogback, saddleback, whaleback;
(hills) heights, downs, downland, foothills;
Geology drumlin, inselberg, monadnock;
British wold;
Scottish & Irish drum;
Scottish brae
North American or technical butte
South African koppie, berg;
in North Africa & the Middle East jebel
archaic holt
1.1A sloping stretch of road: they were climbing a steep hill in low gear...
- The course has steep hills, and the roads sweep wide, then narrow to cobblestones.
- A tricky road, on a hill where the cars, as they coast down, can't help but nudge over 30.
- The customer also added that the car seemed to run strange whenever she was descending a hill or steep grade.
Synonyms
slope, rise, drop, incline, gradient, elevation, acclivity, declivity, ascent, descent, eminence, hillside, hillock, sloping ground, rising ground
1.2A heap or mound of something: a hill of sliding shingle...
- The couscous plate is a hill of semoule with carrots, chickpeas, a potato, two merguez and savoury broth.
- It is a position that has long been no more than a hill of rhetorical dung.
- Dip in to any part of the page and it's like lifting a rock off a hill of sleaze.
Synonyms
heap, pile, stack, mass, mound, mountain, quantity, load;
Scottish, Irish, & Northern English rickle;
Scottish bing
rare amassment
2 rare A flock of ruffs: a hill of ruffs looked at from a distance on a sunny day was a very pleasing spectacle...
- Should anyone wish to ascertain what a hill of ruffs is like, they should inspect the beautiful case of these birds placed in the Natural History Museum.
- As soon as the Harriers began to work over this hill of ruffs, they disappeared.
- The net may be suddenly pulled over, so as to fold up the whole hill of ruffs that may be assembled together.
verb [with object]
1Form (something) into a heap.
1.1Bank up (a plant) with soil: if frost threatens our new plants, we hill them up...
- Soil hilled up around the corn plant as it grows stimulates further axillary root formation.
- An alternative to this is hilling up the stem with more soil when it is 10-12 inches tall.
- The process is known as hilling and is done just before the ground is likely to freeze solid.
Phrases
a hill of beans
over the hill
Origin
Old English hyll, of Germanic origin; from an Indo-European root shared by Latin collis and Greek kolōnos 'hill'.