Range, Ridge, Rise, Scarp: Origins, Forms, 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: range, ridge, rise, and scarp. 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.

Range
Modern English range comes from Middle English range ("row of persons," 14th century), an adaptation of Middle French renge ("row of persons"). The Middle French noun is based on the Old French verb rengier ("to range").

From its original meaning of a row, line, file, or rank of persons, the Middle English word was extended to denote a series of things of any kind.

Eventually range developed a topographical meaning: a series, or chain, of mountain peaks considered as forming one connected system (1705).

A well-known example is the Rocky Mountains, a western North America range whose peaks extend from the Mexican frontier to the Arctic, through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and Alaska.

Ridge
Modern English ridge comes from Middle English ridge (15th century) and rigge (14th century), from Old English hrycg (before 1100). The word is akin to Old High German hrukki ("ridge, spine").

Originally the Old English word, like the Old High German word, denoted a human or animal backbone, or spine, hence any elongated crest or series of crests.

The elongated-crest idea led to a topographical meaning of ridge: a range, or chain, of hills or mountains (10th century).

Rise
The noun rise evolved in the 15th century from the verb rise, which goes back to Old English risan ("to rise," before 1100).

Rise has two topographical meanings: a piece of land that has risen above the surrounding ground, that is, a hill (1639), and a piece of land that is on a rising slant, that is, an upward slope (1698).

Scarp
Scarp entered English in the 16th century from Italian scarpa. The word is probably of Germanic origin and is akin to Old English scearp ("sharp").

The original English meaning of scarp was the steep slope forming the inner side of a ditch below the parapet of a fortification (1589). Since then it has also denoted other kinds of slopes, such as a steep face on a hill and a line of cliffs produced by faulting (fracturing of the earth's crust and consequent displacement of strata).
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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.