Nobody has commented on the second half of Cecil’s post, re: mountains vs. hills. I grew up half a mile from Mountain Road, which was hilarious since it was maybe 20 miles long and went through mostly flat land at the top of the Chesapeake Bay, at least a hundred miles from any mountains.
The premise of “The Englishman who Walked Up A Hill and Came Down Mountain” was that the British surveyors considered anything under 1000 feet a hill, but over that was a mountain. It was such a point of local pride that the Welsh inhabitants started carting wheelbarrows of dirt up the hill to build the peak back up from 986 feet into mountain status.
As for ship vs. boat, the guy who taught me sailing defined a ship as an ocean-going vessel over 150 feet in length. That definition would leave out the Nina/Pinta/Santa Maria, plus much of the British and French navy circa 1800, plus all vessels on the Great Lakes. Since I’m just a pleasure boater, though, I’ll defer to those other posters who make their living on the sea.
well as someone who has spent a lot of time in the Rockies I can at least answer for the USA. Mountains are what the Rockies have a hill is what they have back east
I grew up in the northwest with various mountain ranges and mountains. When I was in England (the Lake district I think) someone said something about the mountain…I looked around and said “what mountain?”
I think the problem here may be that there are really two english words “boat”.
One means all floating things that are man-made and carry passengers, cargo, or both. One means the subset thereof that is smallish, has a hull (as opposed to rafts, for instance), and other criteria I can’t think of just yet.
The first is used FAR less commonly than the second, and when it is used folks tend to add the word “technically” to make it clear they are using it. As in, “A raft is technically a boat”.
I had noticed that such words often get different usages depending on the area, and what one could compare it to.
My father was from central New York, I grew up in northeast Connecticut.
Avon Mountain, in Avon Connecticut, is only 950 feet high and only 700 feet higher than the surrounding country. It is also one of the tallest things as far as the eye can see.
There was a “Hill” near my father’s childhood home that was taller, and a bigger rise from the river valley, but when you can see the Adirondacks, which are real mountains, it looks small.
We had four “rivers” in town, each was shallow and narrow. Some got to 6 or 8 feet deep in spots, but usually one could wade and not get one’s crotch wet. I saw a guy use a running start and jump across one of them at a narrow spot, so well under 20 feet just there.
In contrast, New York has several “creeks” that I doubt could be jumped by Evil Knevil. But they also have rivers that are over a mile wide.
In CT, we had “creeks” that were small bodies of moving water you could step across, and “streams” that were wider but still small. In NY, they called all such things “cricks”.
And now to add to the list of ponderables: pond versus lake? I’ve seen “lakes” that were knee-deep and too small to play football on. I’ve seen “ponds” that one could grow sore trying to walk around. Is there an actual distinction? Or is it like the difference between “dialect” and “separate language”: no recognized differentiation, and basically arbitrary?
