mountaineer

What it means

1. archaicA person who lives in a mountainous area (often with the connotation that such people are outlaws or uncivilized).First known use 16th c.

   (obsolete)

   5 more examples

   This was my master, A very valiant Briton and a good, That here by mountaineers lies slain.

   1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]

   No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaneer Will dare to soyle her virgin puritie

   Comus

   1634 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC, page 15

   A mountaineer can tread firm upon a precipice and walk erect without tottering along the path, that winds itself about the craggy cliff, on which he has his dwelling; whilst the inhabitant of the valley travels with affright and danger over the giddy pass […]

   1786, Richard Cumberland, The Observer, volume 1, number 20, London: C. Dilly, page 184

   The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut; neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it.

   1822, William Hazlitt, “On the Fear of Death”, in Table-Talk, volume 2, London: Henry Colburn, page 388

   My formal Spanish must have sounded as pretentious to the ears of the paisano as “Whither goeth my sire?” would have sounded to a semi-literate Ozark mountaineer.

   1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 30, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, published 2002, page 228

   Synonyms: highlander, mountainer

2. A person who climbs mountains for sport or pleasure.First known use 19th c.

   […] zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together […]

   1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, New York: Modern Library, page 223

   2 more examples

   He first took me into Switzerland, and had he kept me there till now, amidst the scenery with which his pen and pencil brought me acquainted, I should have looked on myself as a very happy mountaineer, and him as a delightful guide!

   1795, Samuel Jackson Pratt, edited by T. N. Longman and L. B. Seeley, Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia, volume 1, London, Supplementary Letters, Letter 3, page 408

   These green and sweetly smelling crops They led in waggons home; And they piled them here in mountain tops For mountaineers to roam.

   1885, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Hayloft”, in A Child’s Garden of Verses, London: Longmans, Green, page 48

   Synonyms: alpinist, cragsman, mountain climber

3. obsoleteAn animal or plant that is native to a mountainous area.

   1892, Sutton and Sons, Reading, The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers, London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 5th edition, p. 217, There really is no need of artificial heat, for the Auricula is a mountaineer, and can endure both frost and snow.

   2 more examples

   1786, George Culley, Observations on Live Stock, London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, p. 92, This hardy race [of sheep] differ from our other breeds, not only in their dark complection and horns, but principally in the long coarse shagged wool which grows upon these mountaineers.

   […] the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees.

   1863, Thomas Henry Huxley, chapter 1, in Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature, London: Williams and Norgate, pages 26–27

In a sentence

(obsolete)

Where it comes from

From mountain + -eer.

First known use: 16th c.