Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • A mountain, 4,478 m (14,692 ft) high, in the Pennine Alps on the Italian-Swiss border. It was first scaled in 1865.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • proper noun A mountain in Italy and Switzerland, 14,690 feet high.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun An iconic pyramidal mountain on the border of Switzerland and Italy.
  • proper noun by extension Something difficult to achieve or to surmount.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a mountain in the Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy (14,780 feet high); noted for its distinctive shape

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From German Matte ("meadow") + Horn ("peak").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Matterhorn.

Examples

  • Because of the steepness of the grade, the client/guide ratio on the Matterhorn is one-to-one; I would be roped to my guide from start to finish.

    James M. Clash: Madness on the Matterhorn James M. Clash 2010

  • Because of the steepness of the grade, the client/guide ratio on the Matterhorn is one-to-one; I would be roped to my guide from start to finish.

    James M. Clash: Madness on the Matterhorn James M. Clash 2010

  • A series of cable cars takes you to the Klein Matterhorn, and then a smaller lift brings you to the highest lift station in Europe, at 12,795 feet.

    Scaling the Heights 1995

  • Finally, 35 years after he first sat down at his manual typewriter? by now divorced and in his 60s? he completed the novel that's called Matterhorn, a debut that has been hailed by American critics as the definitive Vietnam novel of our times?

    Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes By Robert McCrum 2010

  • We admitted that we were and asked him where the trail went, and he said that if we kept going, it would take us all the way to Monte Cervino, which is also known as the Matterhorn.

    Full Frontal Nudity Harry Hamlin 2010

  • The ice-bound peak of the Alps known as the Matterhorn, situated between

    Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 An Illustrated Weekly Various

  • The mountains themselves stood back, as it were, darkling and unobtrusive; all that was left of the Matterhorn was a towering gap in the stars; and in the faint cold light stood my friends, somewhat close together, and I thought I saw the red tips of two cigarettes.

    No Hero 1893

  • The path up the edge of the Matterhorn is a foot wide, yet it is granite, even if the climber does look down thousands of feet upon his right and thousands of feet upon his left.

    The Battle of Principles A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict Newell Dwight Hillis 1893

  • My understanding of that truth came partly from my own time in Afghanistan and partly from my conversations with a Vietnam veteran named Karl Marlantes, who wrote about his experiences in a devastating novel called "Matterhorn."

    NYT > Home Page By SEBASTIAN JUNGER 2011

  • Marlantes likes to think that those similarities are one reason for the success of "Matterhorn" - baby boomers who lived through Vietnam can see those parallels.

    The Seattle Times 2011

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.