take to the hills

verb

"take-to-the-hills" is a 14-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“take to the hills” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
17
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To flee or vanish; to run away.

Corpus desk

Index EN-take-to-the-hills · take to the hills · English

take to the hills · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 17 letters
  • VOW-5 5 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "T" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for take to the hills
PropertyValue
Headwordtake to the hills
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters17
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “take to the hills” in English

take to the hillsranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

take to the hills is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To flee or vanish; to run away.".

take to the hills has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is take to the hills, spelled T-A-K-E- -T-O- -T-H-E- -H-I-L-L-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    To flee or vanish; to run away.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how take to the hills appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. He often took to the hills when his mother-in-law was in town.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "take to the hills"?
"take to the hills" is spelled T-A-K-E- -T-O- -T-H-E- -H-I-L-L-S.
What does "take to the hills" mean?
As a verb, "take to the hills" means: To flee or vanish; to run away.
What language does "take to the hills" come from?
"take to the hills" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list