Mount Everest

Definition

An endeavor that is very demanding yet rewarding; also, something which is the highest achievement, challenge, etc.; the epitome, the pinnacle, the ultimate.

Etymology

From mount + Everest, coined by the British army officer and Surveyor General of India Andrew Scott Waugh (1810–1878)—originally as Mont Everest—in a paper of March 1, 1856 to the Royal Geographical Society, after his predecessor George Everest (1790–1866): see the quotation. The name Mount Everest was used in a paper on October 27, 1856 by the British naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson (1800 or 1801 – 1894) and by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871), the President of the Society, at a meeting of the Society on May 11, 1857 at which the two papers were read.

Example Sentences

• "We stand on the colossal peak of King Lear, with Othello on our right hand and Macbeth on our left, the sublime masses of Elizabethan mountain country rolling on every side of us, yet plainly dominated by the extraordinary central cluster of aiguilles on which we have planted ourselves. This triple summit of the later tragedies of [William] Shakespeare forms the Mount Everest of the poetry of the world."
• "After this rather tricky problem let's climb the Mount Everest of all writing problems. I mean, of course, the world-famous, forbidding peak of U.S. income-tax prose."
• "Personally, as a coach, I always considered the NCAA Tournament to be the Mount Everest of basketball. Just to be asked to climb it was a compliment."