Hilltopping

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. As you know, I do a lot of hiking in the mountains around San Diego County.

And I find that often when I get up to around 4,000, 5,000 feet, I’ll suddenly see butterflies.

And they’re usually these beautiful black and yellow swallowtails. They’re kind of big and

They’re right up there on the mountain peaks. And the first time I went up there and saw them,

I thought, well, cool, you know, we’re all celebrating.

I got up here.

The second time I thought, well, that’s weird.

It happened again.

And the third time I thought, what is going on here?

Every time I go to a mountaintop, there are butterflies.

And sure enough, I learned last week on a hike with some guys from the San Diego Natural History Museum

That indeed there’s a word for this.

It is a thing.

What is it?

Hilltopping.

Hilltopping is what the butterflies are doing?

Yeah, yeah.

It’s called hilltopping.

And it turns out that male butterflies of many species, they’ll go and hang out on top of mountaintops waiting for the ladies.

And the ones that go to the highest point clearly have the best genes.

And it’s sort of like advertising.

Yo, you know.

All right.

Come get some of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve got great genes.

I was so excited to hear that there was a word for it.

But it seems to me that this is also a word that we could adapt for human behavior.

You know, when you’re trying to impress somebody, you’re strutting a little more than usual, whether, you know, whether you’re trying to impress your boss or a potential partner, hilltopping.

Hilltopping, sure.

Like a butterfly on top of a mountain.

Okay.

We’ll try it.

We’ll see how it goes.

This is a show about words and language, speaking and writing, all the things we say and why we say them and when and how and so on and so forth.

877-929-9673.

Send an email to words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on Twitter @wayword.