Hillside

How to spell hillside

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hillside

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hillside mean?

1. nounThe sloping side of a hill.

Hillside in a sentence

• The cottage sat halfway up the hillside overlooking the valley.

• Sheep grazed across the grassy hillside all afternoon.

Where does hillside come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound, formed by joining two old Germanic words. 'Hill' descends from Old English 'hyll', which traces back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning a raised mass of land, and it is distantly related to the Latin 'collis' (a hill) through a shared ancient ancestor. 'Side' comes from Old English 'side', meaning the long surface or flank of something, originally even the human body's flank. The two were welded together in Middle English to describe the sloping flank of a hill, and the meaning has stayed remarkably stable ever since. Because both elements are common everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises; the only thing to watch is that it is written as one solid word, not 'hill side' or 'hill-side'.

How the word is built

• hill (a raised area of land)
• side (a flank or slope)