Learn English – Small mountain or low mountain

adjectivescollocationnounsword-choice

What do you call something that is smaller than a mountain but bigger than a hill?

There is a small mountain near my hometown.

"Small mountain" sounds better than "low mountain" to me but I got confused on which word to use because some songs use high/highest mountains.

If both "small mountain" and "low mountain" are correct, which one sounds more natural to you?

"There is a low mountain near my hometown." sounds a little odd to me. I had a conversation with a non-native speaker (just like me) who likes hiking. In relation to hiking, would low mountain be better?

Best Answer

A specific geological formation bridging the gap between ordinary hills and full-fledged mountains (and pleasant to hike):

foothills

They are a transition zone between plains and low relief hills to the adjacent topographically higher mountains, hills, and uplands...Foothills primarily border mountains...Another word for a foothill region is piedmont, characterized by relatively low, rolling hills with heights above sea level between 200 feet (50 m) and 800 feet to 1,000 feet (250 m to 300 m)... Essentially, the Piedmont is the remnant of several ancient mountain chains that have since been eroded away.

Piedmont and foothills (or foot-hills) are essentially the same thing geographically, although foot-hill is rooted in Old English, while piedmont is from Old Italian.

First known use of foothill: 1788

Some of the hikes are in the foothills and some are in the lower slopes of the mountains.

Related Solutions

Word Choice – Difference Between ‘Redundant’ and ‘Superfluous’

"Redundant" involves repetition. In the following example, there are two examples of redundancy: "This blue, azure shirt is torn and ripped." Blue and azure are redundant, and torn and ripped are redundant. Note that these redundancy pairs do not include words that are exactly synonymous, but which are close enough in meaning that one would usually consider them redundant. Two points here: 1. Neither word in such a pair is necessarily the redundant one; either one can be considered redundant, depending on which one you consider to be the more important, useful, or accurate one in the given context. Commonly, the second word is considered the redundant one, but that is merely because the first word got a chance to establish itself before the second one came along; if you were revising the text, you might choose to keep the second, not the first. 2. The same word repeated ("this blue blue shirt") is an example of redundancy, but this is usually done for emphasis, or for poetic effect, and so is seldom saddled with the accusation of redundancy. Thus, "redundant" does tend to carry the implication of an unnecessary repetition.

A tip: To help you remember this, note that "redundant" begins with "re," as in "repetition." That piece of these words means "again."

"Superfluous," on the other hand, refers to something that is more than what is necessary. Think of water running over the rim of a glass when you continue to pour water into it beyond its capacity. The water over- (super) flows (fluous). Often something superfluous is so because it is needlessly repetitive, and this confuses the picture a bit. But in my opinion, "superfluous" is better used when the element is not repetitive, but is genuinely not needed, as in this example: "After George embedded the fence post in thirty pounds of concrete buried underground, the brick he balanced atop the post to hold it down was superfluous."

Learn English – Proper adjective to use with the word “chance” (“low”, “small”, “slim”, etc.)

All three are grammatical and idiomatic. A chance can be all of these things, and more. The top 50 collocations from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC) look as follows:

    COCA                                BNC

 1  a good chance              1403     a good chance             274   
 2  a better chance            1059     a better chance           173
 3  a fair chance               218     a fair chance              56
 4  a real chance               189     a great chance             47
 5  a greater chance            133     a real chance              32
 6  a great chance              127     a reasonable chance        31
 7  a reasonable chance         103     a greater chance           27
 8  a decent chance              72     a realistic chance         24
 9  a rare chance                61     a new chance               18
10  a slim chance                59     a rare chance              14
11  a big chance                 56     a slim chance              13
12  a small chance               53     a glorious chance          12
13  a realistic chance           46     a sporting chance          11
14  a strong chance              46     a small chance             10
15  a new chance                 43     a strong chance            10
16  a slight chance              36     a high chance               9
17  a final chance               29     a further chance            9
18  a serious chance             26     a unique chance             9
19  a legitimate chance          25     a big chance                7
20  a higher chance              25     a lucky chance              7
21  a remote chance              23     a remote chance             6
22  a once-in-a-lifetime chance  19     a marvellous chance         6
23  a significant chance         18     a fine chance               5
24  a sporting chance            18     a final chance              5
25  a unique chance              18     a wonderful chance          5
26  a fresh chance               13     a proper chance             4
27  a high chance                13     a higher chance             4
28  a golden chance              11     a happy chance              4
29  a solid chance               11     a simple chance             4
30  a better-than-average chance 10     a slight chance             4
31  a better-than-even chance     9     a reduced chance            3
32  a fine chance                 8     a golden chance             3
33  a huge chance                 8     a decent chance             3
34  a single chance               8     a fat chance                3
35  a little chance               7     a fresh chance              3
36  a low chance                  7     a useful chance             3
37  a perfect chance              7     a winning chance            3
38  a wonderful chance            7     a brief chance              2
39  a genuine chance              6     a close-range chance        2
40  a poor chance                 6     a full chance               2
41  a terrific chance             6     a fucking chance            2
42  a tiny chance                 6     a genuine chance            2
43  a large chance                5     a little chance             2
44  a full chance                 5     a low chance                2
45  a fat chance                  5     a missed chance             2
46  a bigger chance               5     a once-in-a-lifetime chance 2
47  a major chance                5     a poor chance               2
48  a missed chance               5     a mathematical chance       2
49  a nice chance                 5     a slender chance            2
50  a brief chance                4     a straightforward chance    2

These usage stats suggest that overall, slim is somewhat preferred over small, and both are clearly preferred over low, on both sides of the pond. Further candidates range from poor to little to remote to slender to once-in-a-lifetime, but see for yourself. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which of these does or does not fit their particular context, especially as no particular context is supplied in this question.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Word Choice – Difference Between ‘Redundant’ and ‘Superfluous’

Learn English – Proper adjective to use with the word “chance” (“low”, “small”, “slim”, etc.)

Related Topic