Word.ws English Dictionary

Mount Rushmore

/ˌmaʊnt ˈɹʌʃmɔː(ɹ)/

Mount Rushmore proper noun: a famous mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota with the heads of four US presidents carved into it.

mount rushmore: a famous mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota with the heads of four US presidents carved...
Image: Winkelvi, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Mount Rushmore

  1. A famous mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota with the heads of four US presidents carved into it.

Noun

Mount Rushmore (plural Mount Rushmores)

  1. (broadly) The four most important people in a particular field or category.
    • In the long run, the companies behind all this technology could emerge from the pandemic as an even greater force in our lives. So said a Mount Rushmore of Times tech reporters: Daisuke Wakabayashi, Jack Nicas, Steve Lohr and Mike Isaac.2020 March 27, Cade Metz, “The Week in Tech: We’re Testing How Much the Internet Can Handle”, in New York Times
    • Crying Dawson ruled the internet comment sections of the late ’00s and early ’10s. It’s “on the Mount Rushmore of GIFs,” says TV critic Sarah D. Bunting.2021 May 1, Constance Grady, quoting Sarah D. Bunting, “The Day Dawson Cried”, in Vox

Forms of Mount Rushmore

pluralMount Rushmores
alternative formRushmore

Origin of Mount Rushmore

Named after American businessman and attorney Charles E. Rushmore (1857–1931). In 1877, the United States broke the Treaty of Fort Laramie and asserted control over the Black Hills area, leading to an influx of settlers and prospectors, among whom was New York mining promoter James Wilson, who organized the Harney Peak Tin Company, and hired Rushmore to visit the Black Hills and confirm the company’s land claims. Rushmore visited the area on three or four trips over the span of 1884 and 1885. During one of these visits, Rushmore was traveling near the base of the peak and, impressed with it, asked his guide, Bill Challis, the mountain’s name, who replied that the mountain did not have a name, but that it would henceforth be named after Rushmore. The name “Mount Rushmore” continued to be used locally, and was officially recognized by the United States Board on Geographic Names in June 1930.

Questions about Mount Rushmore

What does Mount Rushmore mean?
Mount Rushmore means a famous mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota with the heads of four US presidents carved into it.
What part of speech is Mount Rushmore?
Mount Rushmore can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce Mount Rushmore?
Mount Rushmore is pronounced /ˌmaʊnt ˈɹʌʃmɔː(ɹ)/.

Words near Mount Rushmore in the dictionary

  1. Mount Roland
  2. Mount Rowan
  3. Mount Royal
  4. Mount Ruapehu
  5. Mount Rumney
  6. Mount Rushmore
  7. Mount Rushmore State
  8. Mount Rushmores
  9. Mount Russell
  10. Mount Sabine
  11. Mount Saint Thomas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Mount Rushmore (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-Mount Rushmore.oga.

Cite this entry: “Mount Rushmore.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mount_rushmore. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.