hill
noun
a natural elevation of the earth's surface, smaller than a mountain.
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hill
1 American
[hil]
/ hɪl /
noun
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hills
plural
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a natural elevation of the earth's surface, smaller than a mountain.
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an incline, especially in a road.
This old jalopy won't make it up the next hill.
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an artificial heap, pile, or mound.
a hill made by ants.
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a small mound of earth raised about a cultivated plant or a cluster of such plants.
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the plant or plants so surrounded.
a hill of potatoes.
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Baseball. mound.
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the Hill. Capitol Hill.
verb (used with object)
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hills,
present (3rd person singular)
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hilled,
past participle, past
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hilling
present participle
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to surround with hills.
to hill potatoes.
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to form into a hill or heap.
idioms
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go over the hill,
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to break out of prison.
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to absent oneself without leave from one's military unit.
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to leave suddenly or mysteriously.
Rumor has it that her husband has gone over the hill.
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over the hill,
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relatively advanced in age.
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past one's prime.
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Hill
2
American
[hil]
/ hɪl /
noun
-
Ambrose Powell 1825–65, Confederate general in the U.S. Civil War.
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Archibald Vivian 1886–1977, English physiologist: Nobel Prize in Medicine 1922.
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James Jerome, 1838–1916, U.S. railroad builder and financier, born in Canada.
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Joe, 1879–1915, U.S. labor organizer and songwriter, born in Sweden.
hill
1
British
/ hɪl /
noun
-
-
a conspicuous and often rounded natural elevation of the earth's surface, less high or craggy than a mountain
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( in combination )
a hillside
a hilltop
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a heap or mound made by a person or animal
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( in combination )
a dunghill
-
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an incline; slope
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informal beyond one's prime
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slang military absent without leave or deserting
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strenuously and persistently
verb
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to form into a hill or mound
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to cover or surround with a mound or heap of earth
Hill
2
British
/ hɪl /
noun
-
Archibald Vivian. 1886–1977, British biochemist, noted for his research into heat loss in muscle contraction: shared the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine (1922)
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Damon Graham Devereux, son of Graham Hill. born 1960, British motor-racing driver; Formula One world champion (1996)
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David Octavius 1802–70, Scottish painter and portrait photographer, noted esp for his collaboration with the chemist Robert Adamson (1821–48)
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Sir Geoffrey ( William ). born 1932, British poet: his books include King Log (1968), Mercian Hymns (1971), The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983), and The Orchards of Syon (2002)
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Graham. 1929–75, British motor-racing driver: world champion (1962, 1968)
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Octavia. 1838–1912, British housing reformer; a founder of the National Trust
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Sir Rowland. 1795–1879, British originator of the penny postage
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Susan ( Elizabeth ). born 1942, British novelist and writer of short stories: her books include I'm the King of the Castle (1970) The Woman in Black (1983), and Felix Derby (2002)
hill
More Idioms
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hillsimple
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hillssimple
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have hilledperfect
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has hilledperfect
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am hillingprogressive
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are hillingprogressive
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is hillingprogressive
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have been hillingperfect progressive
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has been hillingperfect progressive
Past
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hilledsimple
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had hilledperfect
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was hillingprogressive
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were hillingprogressive
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had been hillingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hill
before 1000; Middle English; Old English hyll; cognate with Middle Dutch hille, Latin collis hill; compare Latin culmen top, peak ( see column, culminate), celsus lofty, very high, Gothic hallus rock, Lithuanian kálnas mountain, Greek kolōnós hill, kolophṓn summit ( see colophon)
Explanation
A hill is a high ridge or mound of land, not as tall as a mountain. A house on a hill has a great view of the surrounding countryside, and very little chance of being flooded. You can hike or drive up a hill — a gentle upward slope, in either case. An accidental or deliberate mound of stuff is another kind of hill, like a hill of snow in your yard, or a hill of trash at the dump. What's considered a hill in mountainous India — a height of up to 10,000 feet — is absolutely a mountain in Great Britain, where a hill is defined as an elevation of less than 2,000 feet.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Imagine a stopped cable car sitting at the top of a steep hill in San Francisco.
From Salon ● Sep. 12, 2026
The route at Thousand Steps Beach in South Laguna gains roughly 250 feet in elevation within a quarter mile from the sand to the highest point of the Ninth Avenue hill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
Robert Springall, former assistant vice president for enrollment at Penn State and now a consultant with WittKieffer, an executive search firm, likened the challenge to Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 30, 2026
"After I had reached the top of the hill, I received a call from my father. He was tearful and I could not speak a word then," she said.
From BBC ● Aug. 30, 2026
I force myself to stay close to him on our first time up the hill, and our second, and our third.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
Schiffman was the study's corresponding author and an adjunct professor in the joint department of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 14, 2026
To learn about them is to learn about a different corner of L.A., from ERL’s Venice and Becky G’s Inglewood to Sage Elsesser’s Mid-City and Kiko Kostadinov’s Melrose Hill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
I had seen the smoke rising from the Pentagon as I traveled to the Capitol Hill headquarters of the Muslim civil rights organization I co-founded, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026
Reports of a pending deal on Capitol Hill suggest both sides of the aisle want to lessen the time it takes for America to build factories, transmission lines and energy projects.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 10, 2026
By the time the Jazz Age marched in, the Hill was a bustling neighborhood full of music, theaters, gambling halls, and families.
From "Ophie's Ghosts" by Justina Ireland
Along the Beagle Channel, an icy stretch of water at the southern tip of the Americas, a concrete slab rises from hills covered in low, brownish scrub.
From Barron's ● Sep. 12, 2026
As a Palestinian taxi driver drove me through the pine-clad hills west of Jerusalem to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport he suddenly turned up the car's radio.
From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2026
A tranquil hanging garden and rolling green hills are mirrored with dreamlike precision on the museum’s curved roof.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
It’s big, too, nearly 10 miles long, and peaky, with some squat concrete buildings up at the crest of one of the hills, and a single telegraph pole.
From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2026
There was one showing the hills where Duane’s cave was, with a morning light washing them in an all too familiar golden hue.
From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el
Dusty and weary, but in excellent spirits over the large space that he and the hired man had "hilled up," he went whistling home through the long shadows of the June evening.
From Without a Home by Edward Payson Roe
These were immediately taken on board, and consisted of two sheep, an elk ready hilled, and a few fowls, with some vegetables and fruit.
This frame is placed with the small end down at the point where the seeds are to be planted, and the earth is hilled up about it and firmly packed with the feet.
From Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by L. H. (Liberty Hyde) Bailey
Then were they ware in the wind where came a rich vessel hilled over with red silk, and the vessel landed fast by them.
From Le Mort d'Arthur: Volume 2 by Sir Thomas Malory
There was little work for Paul to do in the village; but he kept their own garden in good trim—the onion-bed clear of weeds, and the potatoes well hilled.
From Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls by Various
Prevailing industry practices often involve the concentrated application of fertilizers during the planting or hilling phases, particularly in Atlantic Canada.
From Salon ● Nov. 28, 2023
At the usual first hilling time, Dowding pulls a little nearby compost around each plant in a minimound, later adding more from the heap as the plants need hilling again.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 29, 2023
He mentions that the Potawatomi word for “hill” is a verb: “Hills are always in the process of hilling, they are actively being hills.”
From New York Times ● May 27, 2020
On an afternoon in March, Loïc Gouzer, a specialist in contemporary art at Christie’s New York, attended a hilling session to survey several works that had been secured for an upcoming auction.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 27, 2016
A slight hilling when the tassels appear will be advisable.
From Home Vegetable Gardening — a Complete and Practical Guide to the Planting and Care of All Vegetables, Fruits and Berries Worth Growing for Home Use by F. F. (Frederick Frye) Rockwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
