anthill
Americannoun
-
anthills
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of anthill
1250–1300; Middle English amete hulle, ampte hille; see ant, hill
Explanation
The mounded nest that ants build out of dirt or sand is called an anthill. You can call a similar mound built by termites an anthill too. While an anthill is a kind of nest, it is generally formed when ants dig underground colonies and deposit the extra soil in one spot. In this way, an anthill is more of a doorway to a whole series of tunnels and nests, although the anthill itself will sometimes also contain nests. In some cases, ants shape the anthill into a specific, deliberate shape.
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:
When an anthill is disturbed, the response comes from the colony acting together rather than from any individual ant.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 8, 2026
But Oloya could not resist walking by an anthill without scooping some of the fresh, soft clay from it and creating a ball for a slingshot or something else from it.
From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2024
Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk, who likened the rebuilding to a bustling anthill, said residents are eager to close a deeply painful chapter.
From Reuters ● Mar. 30, 2023
A recent profile in a French news site described Mr. Onishi and others as “kicking the anthill just by naming things” that had previously gone unspoken.
From New York Times ● Nov. 15, 2020
The captain barks orders to scrambling crewmen, who disgorge from the main hatch like ants from a flooding anthill.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
The sandfly commonly shelters in cracks in poorly plastered mud houses, anthills and soil fissures, multiplying during the rainy season after prolonged drought.
From Barron's ● Feb. 8, 2026
The rendition is hypnotic but also distancing, making these utopian dreamworlds seem even more artificial than they already were, now ungrounded in space and time, crowds moving en masse through cosmic anthills.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 14, 2026
Begay Sr. uses a walking stick to wind past pockets of yellow flowers, heavily trafficked anthills and the occasional prickly pear.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 30, 2023
And then fire threatens his family and all those issues become anthills in comparison to surviving this night.
From Salon ● Sep. 29, 2023
We sat down and looked at the graham-cracker anthills we had made.
From "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison
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.
