ENGLISH
REFERENCE

molehill mountaineer

idiom
Meaning

A person who habitually exaggerates or overemphasizes minor issues.


Origin

disputed origin

From the idiomatic expression make a mountain out of a molehill.

Examples
SIMPLE

Stop acting like a molehill mountaineer over this small mistake.

CONTEXTUAL

He is such a molehill mountaineer that he called an emergency meeting just because the printer ran out of paper.

COMPLEX

The manager, a notorious molehill mountaineer, turned the minor clerical error into a crisis that consumed the entire afternoon.

Anchors to
Related idioms1entry
  1. 01

    make a mountain out of a molehill

    To treat a problem as greater than it is; to blow something out of proportion; to exaggerate the importance of something trivial.

© 2026 English Reference