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Etymology
Origin of hilly
1350–1400; Middle English; Old English hyllīc. See hill, -y 1
Explanation
Land that's hilly rises and falls with many hills. The hilly roads in eastern Kansas might surprise you, if you've always imagined the entire state being completely flat. A hilly neighborhood requires walkers to trudge up steep slopes, and a hilly field is a picturesque backdrop for a farmer's exotic sheep to graze in. Anything that's hilly is marked with hills, or mounds of land that are smaller than mountains. The Old English source of both hilly and hill is hyll, from a Proto-Germanic root.
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:
The film revels in languid establishing shots of the Santa Clara Valley, with the hilly Diablo Range in the background.
From Salon ● Jun. 8, 2026
It is positioned before a photographic backdrop of a fortress that overlooks lush, hilly terrain and coastal waters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 6, 2026
He lives on-site, working 365 days a year running the Yamaroku Soy Sauce brewing house on the hilly Shodoshima Island in Japan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
This is because some polling stations are located in difficult, hilly terrain – more than 80% of Nepal is mountainous – which makes the collection of ballot boxes a challenging logistical exercise.
From BBC ● Mar. 13, 2026
The land here was hilly and green, forests tucked in close beside the road, and the air smelled of pine.
From "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech
In hillier areas, landslides destroyed roads and bridges collapsed.
From Reuters ● Sep. 11, 2023
Walkers who take the hillier route to the left will pass Serra’s “Contour 290,” a towering 2004 steel twist that curves around a grove of trees.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 1, 2022
Augusta National is hillier than it looks on TV, so it’s easy to lose your footing and take a tumble.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2022
A much larger group of common whites, many of them poor ex-servants, struggled to find their own farms, often in hillier or less fertile districts far from the coast.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
Starting from the sandy southern point, the island grew wider and greener and hillier until it finally jutted up into the rocky cone of the mountain.
From "The Wild Robot" by Peter Brown
Long nature walks are more my speed, so I took the bionic legs on San Francisco’s hilliest trails.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026
Buses will travel on roads that receive regular treatment and that avoid the county’s hilliest areas.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2022
One of the deepest subway stations in one of the hilliest parts of New York City is now home to a subterranean hike.
From New York Times ● May 20, 2022
So we called around Los Angeles to find the hilliest course with steep and smooth cartpaths, and found Braemar Country Club.
From Golf Digest ● Mar. 21, 2018
Belmouth was four miles off, and one of the hilliest four miles imaginable.
From Dick and Brownie by Mabel Quiller-Couch
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.
