hill

From Middle English hil, from Old English hyll (“hill”), from Proto-Germanic *hulliz (“hill”), from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥Hnís (“top, hill, rock”) (compare also Proto-Germanic *halluz (“stone, rock”)).

Cognate with Middle Dutch hille, hulle (“hill”), Low German hull (“hill”), Old Norse hóll (“hill”), Latin collis (“hill”), Lithuanian kalnas, Albanian kallumë (“big pile, tall heap”), Russian холм (xolm, “hill”), Old English holm (“rising land, island”). More at holm.

• enPR: hĭl, IPA^(key): /hɪl/
  • (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA^(key): [hɪɫ]
  • (l-vocalizing: UK, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA^(key): [hɪo̯], [hɪʊ̯]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪl
• Homophone: he'll (in some dialects)

hill (plural hills)

1. An elevated landmass smaller than a mountain.

   The park is sheltered from the wind by a hill to the east.

   • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     So this was my future home, I thought! […] Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

2. A sloping road.

   You need to pick up speed to get up the hill that's coming up.

3. (US) A heap of earth surrounding a plant.
4. (US) A single cluster or group of plants growing close together, and having the earth heaped up about them.

   a hill of corn or potatoes

5. (baseball) The pitcher’s mound.
6. The raised portion of the surface of a vinyl record.

   Antonym: dale

• (elevation): hillock, toman (smaller hills)

•   hill on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
•   Hill in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

hill (third-person singular simple present hills, present participle hilling, simple past and past participle hilled)

1. To form into a heap or mound.
   • 1849, Herman Melville, Mardi: And a Voyage Thither. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:

     Spread, heaped up, stacked with good things; and redolent of citrons and grapes, hilling round tall vases of wine;

2. To heap or draw earth around plants.
   • 1977, Gene Weltfish, The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, page 102:

     After the seeds were inserted, the earth was hilled up all around into a smooth little mound.

hill

1. Alternative form of hele (“hill”)
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Fearnee Hill.

     Ferny Hill.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 39