Mount

How to spell mount

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mount

What does mount mean?

1. verbTo climb up onto or get up onto something, such as a horse or a set of stairs.
2. verbTo fix or attach something securely into a raised or display position.
3. verbTo rise or accumulate steadily in amount or intensity.
4. verbTo organise and carry out a planned undertaking such as an event or campaign.
5. nounA support, frame, or backing onto which something is fixed for display or use.

Mount in a sentence

• verb

  The rider paused before she would mount the nervous horse.

• verb

  They hired an electrician to mount the television on the living-room wall.

• verb

  The repair bills began to mount as the old car aged.

• verb

  The gallery plans to mount a major exhibition next spring.

• noun

  The camera screwed neatly onto the metal mount on the tripod.

• verb

  He began to mount the staircase two steps at a time.

Where does mount come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun mons, with the stem mont-, meaning 'mountain' or 'hill', the same root that gives us 'mountain' itself. From the idea of a hill came the verb, since to go up a slope was literally to take to the heights; Latin developed montare, 'to climb' or 'to go up', and this passed into Old French as monter. English borrowed both strands in the medieval period: the noun for a hill or peak (still seen in names like Mount Snowdon) and the verb meaning to climb, to get onto a horse, and later to fix something into a raised position. From the sense of climbing came the figurative meaning of rising or accumulating, as when costs mount. The shared mont- root neatly links the simple spelling of mount to its grander cousins 'mountain', 'amount', and 'paramount'.

How the word is built

• mount (from Latin mons, montem: mountain, hill), now used as a verb and noun without affixes