Make a mountain out of a molehill

Make a mountain out of a molehill

Making a mountain out of a molehill is an idiom referring to over-reactive, histrionic behaviour where a person makes too much of a minor issue.

Metaphor

The idiom is a metaphor for the common behaviour of responding disproportionately to something - usually an adverse circumstance.[1] One who "makes a mountain out of a molehill" is said to be greatly exaggerating the severity of the situation.[2] In cognitive psychology, this form of distortion is called magnification.[3] The term is also used to refer to one who has dwelled on a situation that has long passed and is therefore no longer significant.[4]

The phrase is so common that a study by psychologists found that with respect to "familiarity" and "image value", it ranks in the top quartile of the 203 common sayings they tested.[5] It is an example of exaggerative accentuation.[6]

Origin

Molehills at the foot of a Scottish mountain

The earliest recorded use of this alliterative phrase is in 1548. The word for the animal involved was less than two hundred years old by then. Previous to that the mole had been known by its Old English name wand, which had slowly changed to 'want'. A molehill was known as a 'wantitump', a word that continued in dialect use for centuries more.[7] The old name of want was then replaced by mold(e)warp (meaning earth-thrower),[8] a shortened version of which (molle) began to appear in the later 14th century[9] and the word molehill in the first half of the 15th century.[10]

The idiom is found in Nicholas Udall's translation of The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon the newe testamente (1548) in the statement that "The Sophistes of Grece coulde through their copiousness make an Elephant of a flye, and a mountaine of a mollehill." The comparison of the elephant with a fly (elephantem ex musca facere) is an old Latin proverb that Erasmus himself had recorded in his collection of such phrases, the Adagia; variations on it still continue in use throughout Europe. The mountain and molehill seem to have been added by Udall[11] and the phrase has continued in popular use ever since. If the idiom was not coined by Udall himself, the linguistic evidence above suggests that it cannot have been in existence long.

Idioms with a similar meaning include 'Much ado about nothing' and 'Making a song and dance about nothing'. They are the opposite of the formerly popular fable about the mountain in labour that gives birth to a mouse. In the former too much is made of little; in the latter one is led to expect much, but with too little result. The two appear to converge in William Caxton's translation (1484), where he makes of the mountain a hylle whiche beganne to tremble and shake by cause of the molle whiche delved it.[12] In other words, he mimics the meaning of the fable and turns a mountain into a molehill. It is out of this bringing together of the two that the English idiom has grown.

References

  1. ^ John Blackwell, Jaime Blackwell, "The Molehill", Reflections: Thoughts Worth Pondering One Moment at a Time, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vdhABILDTTcC 
  2. ^ Snicket, Lemony (January 1, 2000). The Austere Academy. Scholastic. ISBN 978-0064408639. http://books.google.com/books?id=n-D8Kt8GDFIC&pg=PA32&dq=%22making+a+mountain+out+of+a+molehill%22&as_brr=3&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&cd=4. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 
  3. ^ William J. Knaus, Albert Ellis (2006), The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression, p. 106, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=p_3PYxltgXoC&pg=PA106 
  4. ^ Knaus, William J (2006). The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression. New Harbinger Publications. http://books.google.com/books?id=p_3PYxltgXoC&pg=PA106&dq=%22making+a+mountain+out+of+a+molehill%22&lr=&as_brr=3&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html&cd=21. Retrieved 2010-01-30. 
  5. ^ Kenneth L. Higbee and Richard J. Millard, Visual imagery and familiarity ratings for 203 sayings, Am. J. Psychiatry, Summer 1983, Vol. 96, No. 2, pp. 211-222; found at JSTOR website. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
  6. ^ Thomas Burkart, Towards a Dialectic Theory of Feeling, in Leo Gürtler, Mechthild Kiegelmann and Günter L. Huber (Eds.), Areas of Qualitative Psychology – Special Focus on Design, Qualitative Psychology Nexus: Vol. 4 (Tübingen, Germany: Verlag Ingeborg Huber 2005) ISBN 3-9810087-0-7, at p. 48. ("Feelings tend to an exaggerative accentuation of the object of feeling, increasing with the intensity of feeling. ... Examples are "to make a mountain out of a molehill ....") Found at Google Scholar. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
  7. ^ J.O.Halliwell, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, London 1847
  8. ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moldwarp
  9. ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mole
  10. ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/molehill
  11. ^ William Safire (June 14, 1987), "On Language - The Earth Makes Its Move", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/magazine/on-language.html?pagewanted=1 
  12. ^ http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/caxton/25.htm

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Look at other dictionaries:

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — To magnify, overdramatize, etc a trifling matter • • • Main Entry: ↑mole make a mountain out of a molehill see under ↑mole1 • • • Main Entry: ↑mountain * * * make a mountain out of a molehill phrase to treat a minor problem as if it …   Useful english dictionary

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — To think a small problem is a big one; try to make something unimportant seem important. * /You re not hurt badly, Johnny. Stop trying to make a mountain out of a molehill with crying./ * /Sarah laughed at a mistake Betty made in class, and Betty …   Dictionary of American idioms

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — To think a small problem is a big one; try to make something unimportant seem important. * /You re not hurt badly, Johnny. Stop trying to make a mountain out of a molehill with crying./ * /Sarah laughed at a mistake Betty made in class, and Betty …   Dictionary of American idioms

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — If somebody makes a mountain out of a molehill, they exaggerate the importance or seriousness of a problem …   The small dictionary of idiomes

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — ► make a mountain out of a molehill exaggerate the importance of a minor problem. Main Entry: ↑molehill …   English terms dictionary

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — to cause something simple to seem much more difficult or important. McAleer knows there s a mistake in the book and promised to correct it, but Rosen continues to complain about it she s really trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Clever… …   New idioms dictionary

  • make\ a\ mountain\ out\ of\ a\ molehill — To think a small problem is a big one; try to make something unimportant seem important. You re not hurt badly, Johnny. Stop trying to make a mountain out of a molehill with crying. Sarah laughed at a mistake Betty made in class, and Betty won t… …   Словарь американских идиом

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — verb To treat a problem as greater than it is; to blow something out of proportion; to exaggerate the importance of something trivial If youre stuck in traffic, try not to make a mountain out of a molehill worrying about it too much. It could be… …   Wiktionary

  • make a mountain out of a molehill — make a big problem out of a small one He is really making a mountain out of a molehill by worrying about his son s problems …   Idioms and examples

  • make a mountain out of a molehill —    If somebody makes a mountain out of a molehill, they exaggerate the importance or seriousness of a problem.   (Dorking School Dictionary)    ***    If someone makes a mountain out of a molehill, they make a small, unimportant problem seem much …   English Idioms & idiomatic expressions

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