"hill to die on" meaning in All languages combined

See hill to die on on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: en-au-hill to die on.ogg [Australia] Forms: hills to die on [plural]
Etymology: An allusion to the instances where a military doggedly pursues a goal or defends a position no matter the cost or (lack of) benefit, typically involving a hill (high ground). Examples include Battle of Hamburger Hill, Battle of Thermopylae, and Last Stand Hill. Head templates: {{en-noun|hills to die on}} hill to die on (plural hills to die on)
  1. (idiomatic) An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost. Wikipedia link: Battle of Hamburger Hill, Battle of Little Big Horn, Battle of Thermopylae Tags: idiomatic Related terms: pick your battles
    Sense id: en-hill_to_die_on-en-noun-Ngq7-2lt Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for hill to die on meaning in All languages combined (2.5kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to the instances where a military doggedly pursues a goal or defends a position no matter the cost or (lack of) benefit, typically involving a hill (high ground). Examples include Battle of Hamburger Hill, Battle of Thermopylae, and Last Stand Hill.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hills to die on",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "hills to die on"
      },
      "expansion": "hill to die on (plural hills to die on)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2006, Cate Dermody, The Firebird Deception, Silhouette Books, published 2006, page 113",
          "text": "\"I'm sorry, Alisha. I can't overrule the European director's decision to move you out of her arena. This isn't a hill to die on. […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Kevin Leman, Under the Sheets: The Secrets to Hot Sex in Your Marriage, Revell, published 2009, page 179",
          "text": "Is correct laundry folding really a hill to die on?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Deborah Smith Pegues, Ricky Temple, Why Smart People Make Dumb Choices, Harvest House Publishers, published 2010, page 49",
          "text": "Though I simply apologized and told him his ranting wasn't necessary. He made a bad decision. I made a good one. As livid as I was, I realized this situation was not a hill to die on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost."
      ],
      "id": "en-hill_to_die_on-en-noun-Ngq7-2lt",
      "links": [
        [
          "issue",
          "issue"
        ],
        [
          "pursue",
          "pursue"
        ],
        [
          "wholehearted",
          "wholehearted"
        ],
        [
          "conviction",
          "conviction"
        ],
        [
          "single-minded",
          "single-minded"
        ],
        [
          "focus",
          "focus"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "pick your battles"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Battle of Hamburger Hill",
        "Battle of Little Big Horn",
        "Battle of Thermopylae"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-hill to die on.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/32/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hill to die on"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "An allusion to the instances where a military doggedly pursues a goal or defends a position no matter the cost or (lack of) benefit, typically involving a hill (high ground). Examples include Battle of Hamburger Hill, Battle of Thermopylae, and Last Stand Hill.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "hills to die on",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "hills to die on"
      },
      "expansion": "hill to die on (plural hills to die on)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "pick your battles"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2006, Cate Dermody, The Firebird Deception, Silhouette Books, published 2006, page 113",
          "text": "\"I'm sorry, Alisha. I can't overrule the European director's decision to move you out of her arena. This isn't a hill to die on. […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Kevin Leman, Under the Sheets: The Secrets to Hot Sex in Your Marriage, Revell, published 2009, page 179",
          "text": "Is correct laundry folding really a hill to die on?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Deborah Smith Pegues, Ricky Temple, Why Smart People Make Dumb Choices, Harvest House Publishers, published 2010, page 49",
          "text": "Though I simply apologized and told him his ranting wasn't necessary. He made a bad decision. I made a good one. As livid as I was, I realized this situation was not a hill to die on.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "issue",
          "issue"
        ],
        [
          "pursue",
          "pursue"
        ],
        [
          "wholehearted",
          "wholehearted"
        ],
        [
          "conviction",
          "conviction"
        ],
        [
          "single-minded",
          "single-minded"
        ],
        [
          "focus",
          "focus"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) An issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded focus, with little or no regard to the cost."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Battle of Hamburger Hill",
        "Battle of Little Big Horn",
        "Battle of Thermopylae"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-hill to die on.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/32/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/En-au-hill_to_die_on.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "hill to die on"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.