mountaineer
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˌmaʊn.tɪnˈɪə̯(ɹ)/
ipa: /ˌmaʊn.tɪnˈɪɹ/
ipa: [ˌmãʊ̯̃(n)ʔn̩ˈiəɹ]
ipa: [ˌmæ̃ʊ̯̃(n)ʔn̩ˈiəɹ]
ipa: [ˌmæ̃ʊ̯̃(n)ʔn̩ˈĩɚ]
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: mountaineers
Etymology: From mountain + -eer.
Senses: examples: text: (obsolete)
text: This was my master,
A very valiant Briton and a good,
That here by mountaineers lies slain.
ref: 1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
text: No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaneer
Will dare to soyle her virgin puritie
ref: 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC, page 15:
english: Comus
translation: Comus
text: A mountaineer can tread firm upon a precipice and walk erect without tottering along the path, that winds itself about the craggy cliff, on which he has his dwelling; whilst the inhabitant of the valley travels with affright and danger over the giddy pass […]
ref: 1786, Richard Cumberland, The Observer, volume 1, number 20, London: C. Dilly, page 184:
text: The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut; neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it.
ref: 1822, William Hazlitt, “On the Fear of Death”, in Table-Talk, volume 2, London: Henry Colburn, page 388:
text: My formal Spanish must have sounded as pretentious to the ears of the paisano as “Whither goeth my sire?” would have sounded to a semi-literate Ozark mountaineer.
ref: 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 30, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, published 2002, page 228:
synonyms: highlander
mountainer
glosses: A person who lives in a mountainous area (often with the connotation that such people are outlaws or uncivilized).
examples: text: He first took me into Switzerland, and had he kept me there till now, amidst the scenery with which his pen and pencil brought me acquainted, I should have looked on myself as a very happy mountaineer, and him as a delightful guide!
ref: 1795, Samuel Jackson Pratt, edited by T. N. Longman and L. B. Seeley, Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia, volume 1, London, Supplementary Letters, Letter 3, page 408:
text: These green and sweetly smelling crops
They led in waggons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.
ref: 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Hayloft”, in A Child’s Garden of Verses, London: Longmans, Green, page 48:
text: […] zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together […]
ref: 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, New York: Modern Library, page 223:
synonyms: alpinist
cragsman
mountain climber
glosses: A person who climbs mountains for sport or pleasure.
examples: text: 1786, George Culley, Observations on Live Stock, London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, p. 92,
This hardy race [of sheep] differ from our other breeds, not only in their dark complection and horns, but principally in the long coarse shagged wool which grows upon these mountaineers.
text: […] the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees.
ref: 1863, Thomas Henry Huxley, chapter 1, in Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, London: Williams and Norgate, pages 26–27:
text: 1892, Sutton and Sons, Reading, The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers, London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 5th edition, p. 217,
There really is no need of artificial heat, for the Auricula is a mountaineer, and can endure both frost and snow.
glosses: An animal or plant that is native to a mountainous area.
glosses: A bird of the genus Oreonympha; also called the bearded mountaineer or eastern mountaineer
Derived terms: molehill mountaineer
nonmountaineer