summit fever

noun

The compulsion to reach the summit of a mountain at all costs.

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Meanings

nounsummit fever (uncountable)
  1. uncountablehobbiesThe compulsion to reach the summit of a mountain at all costs.

    Now that we were so close on Kilimanjaro, summit fever was taking me again.

    2010, Daniel Dorr, Kissing Kilimanjaro:Leaving it All on Top of Africa, →ISBN
  2. broadlyfigurativelyuncountableThe obsessive urge to complete a task.

    We suffer from summit fever. We push just a little harder, hoping we can rest when we get to the top. When we postpone an oasis until our to-do list is finished or until we've answered all of the 193 emails in our in-box, then we have summit fever.

    2004, Steve Donahue, Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change, →ISBN
Cite this entry
APA

summit fever. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/summit%20fever

MLA

“summit fever.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/summit%20fever. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “summit fever,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/summit%20fever.

Source: summit fever on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.