Peak, Pen, Pike, Pinnacle: Origins, Forms, and Histories of Words Meaning Hill or Slope

The natural features of a region are called its topography. The word comes from Greek topos ("place").

English speakers have a long history of inventing (or borrowing from other languages) all sorts of different names for related topographical features.

Hill and slopes, for example, are known by a wide range of words in English, each with its own unique story to tell.

In the alphabetically arranged presentation of such terms in the current series, the next words are these: peak, pen, pike, and pinnacle. Here is an overview of their origins, forms, and histories. The dates of first appearance of the forms and meanings are from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Peak
The hill-related word peak entered the English language during the 16th century. It is of uncertain origin, but it may be an alteration (influenced, according to some early uses, by beak) of pike.

The original meaning of peak is any sort of projecting point, such as a bird's beak (now obsolete) or a part of a garment (1530).

The jutting-out idea was soon extended to topographical features. A promontory, or high point of land, was termed a peak by at least 1548. Later the word peak was applied to the top part of a hill or mountain ending in a point or to such a hill or mountain itself (1634).

The Peak District is a famous plateau region in northern England. This Peak, however, goes back to Old English Péac (origin unknown, before 1100). Though associated with the later peak in form, this word has no etymological connection with it.

Pen
The English hill-related word pen comes from Brythonic pen ("head," hence "headland" and "hill"). Brythonic was a branch of Celtic languages. It included the languages of the Brythons (Britons) of Wales and Cornwall, that is, Welsh and Cornish.

The principal use of the word is in place-names. A famous example is Penzance, the name of a seaside resort in Cornwall, southwest England. The town was first mentioned by name in the 14th century and was incorporated in 1614. In its original Cornish form, Pensans, the name means "holy headland," a reference to the chapel of St. Anthony that stood prominently on the headland near the local harbor.

Pike
Pike is one of the most complicated hill-related words.

Old English pic ("pickax") later became pike. However, this word does not seem to be the origin of the topographical pike.

There are two important hill-related words in the form of pike. They have similar meanings but different origins and histories.

(1) The first hill-related pike entered Middle English in the 13th century. It may be of Scandinavian origin and be akin to Norwegian dialectal pik ("pointed mountain").

Its main use in English, too, quickly became dialectal, specifically in northern England, where it referred, especially in place-names, to a pointed summit or to a hill or mountain with a pointed summit (c. 1250).

The word is still attached to such elevations in northern England, notably in the Lake District. Well-known examples include Red Pike and Scafell Pike.

(2) The second hill-related pike entered English in the 16th century as an adaptation of Spanish pico ("beak, peak"). This pike had the same basic meanings as the earlier pike: a pointed summit or a hill or mountain having such a summit (1555).

However, besides its separate origin and its later introduction, this pike had two other differences from the earlier pike. First, it had general English-language use in describing hills and mountains, not the regional place-name use of the earlier pike. Second, it became obsolete, replaced by peak, while the earlier, northern England place-name word has remained pike.

Pinnacle
Modern English pinnacle goes back through Middle English pinnacle (14th century) and pinacle (14th century), Middle French pinacle, and Late Latin pinnaculum ("small wing, gable") to Latin pinna ("wing, battlement").

The word's first use in English was to denote an upright architectural unit ending in a spire (14th century).

Soon a topographical sense of pinnacle evolved: any natural peaked formation, apparently at first a point projecting into the sea (14th century) and later a lofty rock pointed at the top (1582), a meaning still widely used today.
__________________________

Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.