# molehill mountaineer

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/molehill-mountaineer
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

A person who habitually exaggerates or overemphasizes minor issues.

## Examples

- Stop acting like a molehill mountaineer over this small mistake.
- You are being a molehill mountaineer about this tiny scratch on your shoe.
- He is such a molehill mountaineer that he called an emergency meeting just because the printer ran out of paper.
- My neighbor is a total molehill mountaineer who calls the police if a single leaf from my tree blows onto his driveway.
- Don't be a molehill mountaineer and quit your job just because your coworker forgot to say hello to you this morning.
- The manager, a notorious molehill mountaineer, turned the minor clerical error into a crisis that consumed the entire afternoon.

## Origin

From the idiomatic expression *make a mountain out of a molehill*, which describes the act of inflating a triviality into a significant crisis. The term identifies one who engages in this specific variety of structural exaggeration. No specific date of coinage or primary author is recorded for the compound itself, though the underlying metaphor has existed in English since the mid-16th century.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.