Mountain Definition: Explanation, Facts, and Practice

To define “mountain,” discover how native speakers incorporate it into their descriptions of nature, travel experiences and geographical features.

Understanding how to say “mountain” using alternative terms will help you describe different types of elevated landforms and geographical features more precisely.

Related nouns: hill peak summit range

Synonyms (contextual): mount

Common collocations: mountain range mountain top snow-capped mountain

Learn how to combine “mountain” with different descriptive words to create vivid images of these beautiful natural formations.

With adjectives: high mountain steep mountain rocky mountain towering mountain

With verbs: climb a mountain hike up a mountain see mountains cross mountains

With nouns (noun + noun): mountain air mountain pass mountain slope mountain stream

These expressions use “mountain” meaning to convey powerful ideas about challenges, perspective and making big impacts in life.

• Make a mountain out of a molehill — to treat a small problem as if it were a very big problem.

  You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s just a tiny scratch on your phone.

• Move mountains — to do something extremely difficult or achieve the seemingly impossible.

  With determination and teamwork, we can move mountains and finish this project on time.

• A mountain to climb — a very difficult task or challenge that requires significant effort.

  Learning a new language is a mountain to climb, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

• King of the mountain — the most powerful or successful person in a group or field.

  After winning the championship three times, he’s now king of the mountain in professional tennis.

• Go over the mountain — to go to the other side or start fresh somewhere new.

  Some pioneers decided to go over the mountain to find better farmland in the west.

Measure your comprehension of “mountains” and the usage of this word with these carefully designed practice questions.

Broaden your geographical vocabulary by learning how to spell “mountain” in Spanish, French and German.

“Mountains” are one of the most striking landscapes on the planet, and these fascinating facts reveal their hidden secrets and extreme characteristics.

• Mount Everest grows taller every year.

  Mount Everest continues to grow by about 4 millimeters each year due to tectonic activity. The Indian and Eurasian plates are still colliding, causing the Himalayas to rise. In one million years, Everest could be hundreds of meters taller than it is today.

• Mountains create their own weather.

  Mountains strongly influence local weather patterns by forcing air to rise, cool and release moisture. As a result, one side of a mountain can be lush and rainy, while the other side may have a dry, desert-like climate.

• Most of Earth’s fresh water comes from mountains.

  More than half of the world’s fresh water originates in mountainous regions and flows into rivers that billions of people depend on for drinking, agriculture and energy. Snowfields and glaciers act as natural reservoirs, slowly releasing water over time.

• The longest mountain range is underwater.

  Although the Himalayas are impressive, they are not the longest mountain range on Earth. That title belongs to the mid-ocean ridge system, which stretches over 65,000 kilometers beneath the ocean’s surface.

See how philosophers, adventurers and thinkers have used phrases with “mountain” as metaphors for life’s greatest lessons and challenges.