Meaning: mountain

Illustrative Context

He started to climb the mountain.

Target Sense

• The most generic term for a prototypically high mountain, as distinct from a mere hill.
• As a generic term within the basic vocabulary, the lexeme selected will typically be applicable to mountains of a wide range of sizes and scales. Nonetheless, its range of application must normally include reference to the highest mountains in the world.
• Certainly, avoid terms such as English hill that denote specifically something not as high as the prototypical mountain. Similarly, the French term is not colline, but montagne; in German not Hügel, but Berg.
• If a language has no one generic term, but mutually exclusive lexemes for different heights/scales/sizes of ‘mountain’, then select whichever basic term is applicable to mountains of the greatest scale.
• The lexeme selected should be applicable to a single, standalone high mountain, prototypically with steep slopes.
• Avoid terms for highland regions in general, or for chains of mountains or highland plateaux, e.g. Spanish sierra, cordillera. The lexeme selected will therefore usually be a singular form, not a collective or mass noun for highland(s).
• Must be a generic term: avoid terms specific to particular types of mountain, e.g. volcano, fell(s), Spanish nevado (i.e. specifically a snowcapped mountain), etc..
• Avoid terms for smaller-scale parts of mountains, e.g. peak, crag.
• Avoid lexemes that are only or predominantly figurative, to refer to large quantities of or ‘heaps’ of things.