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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:
“In hilly terrain there are hundreds of low water crossings which are potentially dangerous in heavy rain,” the agency said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Residents should "move away from the shore, either by going more than two kilometres inland or by moving up into hilly areas more than 10 meters high," he told local broadcaster Kompas TV.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
The first occurred in 2007–2008 in Uganda’s western, hilly district of Bundibugyo, for which the strain was named, resulting in 131 cases and 42 deaths.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
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
There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Hydrants functioned at lower elevations, but in hillier areas like the Palisades Highlands — where the storage tanks hold water that flows by gravity to communities below — they ran dry.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 9, 2025
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
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
To one living in the hilliest and most picturesque part of Hampshire and Sussex this first glimpse came as a disappointment.
From A Lad of Grit A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea in Restoration Times by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
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.
