Definition of "mountaineer"
mountaineer
noun
plural mountaineers
(now rare) A person who lives in a mountainous area (often with the connotation that such people are outlaws or uncivilized).
Quotations
This was my master,A very valiant Briton and a good,That here by mountaineers lies slain.
1611 April (first recorded performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Cymbeline”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii]
No savage fierce, bandite, or mountaneerWill dare to soyle her virgin puritie
1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, page 15
A mountaineer can tread firm upon a precipice and walk erect without tottering along the path, that winds itself about the craggy cliff, on which he has his dwelling; whilst the inhabitant of the valley travels with affright and danger over the giddy pass […]
1786, Richard Cumberland, The Observer, volume 1, number 20, London: C. Dilly, page 184
The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut; neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it.
1822, William Hazlitt, “On the Fear of Death”, in Table-Talk, volume 2, London: Henry Colburn, page 388
A person who climbs mountains for sport or pleasure.
Quotations
He first took me into Switzerland, and had he kept me there till now, amidst the scenery with which his pen and pencil brought me acquainted, I should have looked on myself as a very happy mountaineer, and him as a delightful guide!
1795, Samuel Jackson Pratt, edited by T. N. Longman and L. B. Seeley, Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia, volume 1, London, Supplementary Letters, Letter 3, page 408
[…] zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together […]
1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, New York: Modern Library, page 223
verb
third-person singular simple present mountaineers, present participle mountaineering, simple past and past participle mountaineered
(intransitive) To climb mountains; to climb using the techniques of a mountaineer.
Quotations
[…] no one who has mountaineered or travelled much in uncharted ground with men of very divergent or very similar powers of sight or experience will be found to discredit [the] positive but entirely accidental possession [of a sense of direction].
1920, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, editor, Mountain Craft, New York: Scribner, page 345
(intransitive, figurative) To climb as if on a mountain.
Quotations
There is a well-made path, which makes a circuit over the mass [of ruins], and is amply sufficient for all rational tourists. Those who wish to see more have to go mountaineering over gigantic columns and pilasters, and squeeze their way through passes of cut stone.
1903, E. M. Forster, “Alberto Empedocle”, in The Life to Come, and Other Stories, Penguin, published 1975, page 47
[…] he sat up and shook his ears once or twice, and then sprang lightly off the window-sill and began to mountaineer about the contents of the garret.
1940, Sylvia Townsend Warner, “The Castle of Carabas”, in Barbara Silverberg, editor, Kitten Caboodle: A Collection of Feline Fiction, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published 1969, page 124