/ˈmeɪk ə ˈmaʊntɪn aʊt əv ə ˈməʊlhɪl/
English idiom, informal. To treat a small problem as if it were a big one.
Draft Not yet checked by a native English speaker.
How do people use Make a mountain out of a molehill
?
Informal but not slangy, so it works at home, at work and in print. It’s nearly always a complaint about someone else: “you’re making a mountain out of a molehill”, or a warning, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill”. The plural “mountains out of molehills” is common when it’s a habit.
Also said make mountains out of molehills
Make a mountain out of a molehill
in real sentences
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You always make a mountain out of a molehill.
Tatoeba, sentence by sundown, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Tom made a mountain out of a molehill.
Tatoeba, sentence by Spamster, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Make a mountain out of a molehill
come from?
This one has a paper trail. Wikipedia points to Nicholas Udall’s 1548 English translation of Erasmus’s paraphrase of the New Testament, where Greek sophists could “make an Elephant of a flye, and a mountaine of a mollehill”. The elephant and the fly come from an old Latin proverb that Erasmus collected in his Adagia, and that’s the version most European languages kept. The mountain and molehill look like Udall’s own English addition, though nobody can prove he coined it. English Wiktionary’s oldest quote is from 1573.
Mistakes learners make with Make a mountain out of a molehill
Flipping it round. “Making a molehill out of a mountain” sounds like a slip, and if anything it would mean the opposite: playing down something serious.
Other English idioms like Make a mountain out of a molehill
Spot a mistake in Make a mountain out of a molehill
?
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