Hilly

How to spell hilly

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hilly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hilly mean?

1. adjectiveHaving many hills; characterised by uneven, rising and falling terrain.

Hilly in a sentence

• The hilly countryside made the cycling route exhausting.

• They bought a cottage in a hilly region near the border.

Where does hilly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word hill comes from the Old English hyll, a native Germanic word for a naturally raised mound of earth lower than a mountain. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root that also gave related words in Dutch and German, and ultimately to an ancient root meaning 'to rise' or 'be prominent', which also feeds the Latin collis 'hill' and celsus 'high'. The adjective hilly was formed within English by adding the productive suffix -y, which turns a noun into an adjective meaning 'full of' or 'covered with', exactly as in 'rocky' or 'sandy'. This pattern has been used in English since the medieval period, and hilly itself is recorded from around the 1400s. The doubled l simply carries over from hill, and the final y replaces no letter, so the spelling is a clean and regular build.

How the word is built

• hill (a raised area of land)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning full of or characterised by)