hilled

1. 1
   adjective

   Marked by the presence of hills across the terrain.

   The hilled landscape forced the road to wind back and forth.

   Sheep grazed across the hilled pastures above the village.

   Similarhilly, rolling, undulating

   Oppositeflat, level

   Note

   As an adjective, it takes degree words and compares with more and most: more hilled, most hilled. It can also say what the hills are made of, using a with-phrase. Elizabeth L. Horn's Coastal Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest (1994) describes plains "partially hilled with sand dunes." That construction keeps a trace of the verb, as if the land itself had been heaped up.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of hill.

   The gardener hilled the bean rows after the spring rains.

   Workers hilled the young corn to give the stalks more support.

   Note

   A regular past form, built with plain -ed. Its gardening use is to hill plants: to draw earth up around their stems for support, as with bean rows or young corn. In American use, the noun hill can name that same mound of earth. The verb can also mean heaping anything into a mound. The adjective for hilly ground has the same spelling, so "hilled rows" can be read either way.

3. 3
   adjectivein compounds

   Marked by hills of the type or number specified, as in seven-hilled or gently hilled.

   Travelers admired the seven-hilled skyline as they approached the ancient capital.

   The poet praised the gently hilled landscape that surrounded his home.

   Note

   Here the word works as a combining form. It needs a word in front of it to say what sort of hills there are or how many. With a number, the two parts join with a hyphen into one adjective: Rome, built on seven hills, became the seven-hilled city. An adverb stays separate, as in a gently hilled landscape. The plain adjective says only that hills are present; this one counts or describes them.

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