Other forms: hills
A hill is a raised piece of land, smaller and softer than a mountain. A steep hill, up the hill, rolling hills.
Britain has no legal line between a hill and a mountain, though the figure of a thousand feet is often quoted and has no official standing. In Scotland almost everything is a hill whatever its height. Note over the hill, meaning past your best; not worth a hill of beans; and old as the hills, which is about as old as an English simile gets.
1nounhillA raised piece of land, smaller than a mountain.
“We climbed to the top of the hill and looked down at the village below.”
hill is a landform.
Old English hyll goes back to a root meaning a high point, related to Latin collis, a hill, and to culminate. The word has barely changed in a thousand years.
Proto-Indo-European
*kelH-
Proto-Indo-European
*kl̥Hnís — top, hill, rock
Proto-Germanic
*hulliz — hill
Proto-West Germanic
*hulli — hill
Old English
hyll — hill
Middle English
hil — hill
English, today
hill
Built from
From Middle English hil (“hill”), from Old English hyll (“hill”), from Proto-West Germanic hulli (“hill”), from Proto-Germanic hulliz (“hill”), from Proto-Indo-European kl̥Hnís (“top, hill, rock”) (compare also halluz (“stone, rock”)). Cognate with Middle Dutch hille, hulle (“hill”), Low German hull (“hill”), Faroese hólur (“hill”), Icelandic - and Old Norse hóll (“hill”), nrn hul (“hillock”), Norwegian hol (“low hillock”), Swedish kulle (“hill”), Catalan coll (“hill”), Italian colle (“hill”), Latin collis (“hill”), Lithuanian kalnas (“hill, mountain”), Albanian kallumë (“big pile, tall heap”), Russian холм (“hill”), Old English holm (“rising land, island”). More at holm.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA