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# molehill

«molehill» in Mova's school dictionary: **A small pile of earth pushed up by a mole digging its…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

noun (a molehill, molehills)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A small pile of earth pushed up by a mole digging its tunnels underground. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#m1)

2) In the saying «make a mountain out of a molehill»: to treat a small problem as if it were a huge one. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In nature lessons molehills on a lawn or field show that a mole lives underground. In everyday speech and stories, the idiom tells the reader that someone is overreacting. Phrases: «make a mountain out of a molehill», «a field full of molehills».

### examples

- The football pitch was covered in molehills. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x1)
- A mole digs tunnels and pushes the soil up into molehills. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x2)
- You've only lost a pencil — don't make a mountain out of a molehill! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x3)
- Grandad grumbled about the molehills on his lawn. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x4)
- We never saw the mole, only fresh molehills each morning. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x5)
- Mum said the argument was a molehill, not a mountain. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x6)
- Gardeners sometimes use the fine soil from molehills for seed pots. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/#x7)

### note

Countable: a molehill, molehills. One word. The idiom is common and means «overreacting». The animal is a mole; do not confuse with «mole» the dark spot on skin or «mole» in chemistry.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «molehill» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/molehill/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.