mountainous

Picture a place where the land rises sharply into high peaks, deep valleys, and rough slopes. That is what mountainous usually describes. It is most often used for regions, countries, roads, or landscapes that have many mountains and are hard to cross because of their steep, uneven ground.

The word can also be used in a figurative way for something very large or hard to deal with. Someone might talk about a mountainous pile of laundry or a mountainous task. In both cases, the idea is the same: something so big that it feels like a mountain.

Mountainous mainly describes land that is covered with mountains or shaped by them. When a place is called mountainous, it usually has many high areas, steep sides, narrow passes, and uneven ground. It suggests more than a single mountain in the distance. It points to a whole area where mountains are a major feature of the landscape. Countries such as Nepal or Switzerland, and regions such as the Rockies, are often described this way.

The word can also describe anything connected with this kind of terrain. A mountainous road may twist through steep slopes. A mountainous border may be hard to cross. A mountainous hike may be tiring because of the climbs and rough ground. In all of these uses, the word gives a clear picture of height, difficulty, and rugged natural shape.

There is also a figurative use. Sometimes mountainous means extremely large in amount, size, or difficulty. A person may face a mountainous problem, a mountainous debt, or a mountainous stack of papers. Here, the comparison is to the size of a mountain: the thing feels huge, heavy, or overwhelming.

So the word works in two main ways. It can describe real places with many mountains, and it can describe something so large or difficult that it seems mountain-like in scale.