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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
anthill
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At times, even in the cities, an anthill occupied by a Cobra can be the cause of great traffic problems.
▪ Bricks were made from sun-dried anthill soil.
▪ His hair had formed itself into an interesting anthill kind of a shape though.
▪ If I can reach that anthill I can get some good sketches.
▪ In the daylight, it resembled a gigantic anthill.
▪ Obscured by clouds and rain in remote corners of croplands, they damaged little more than anthills or irrigation networks.
▪ Once the mortar rounds started falling, I jumped behind an anthill with my legs exposed.
▪ Sioux medicine men collected tiny, glistening pebbles from anthills and used them in medicine rattles.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
anthill

late 13c., from ant + hill.

Wiktionary
anthill

n. A cone-shaped formation constructed from sediment and other available materials by ants or termites. The colony nests underneath this cone.

WordNet
anthill

n. a mound of earth made by ants as they dig their nest [syn: formicary]

Usage examples of "anthill".

The Africans seemed to prefer trees for their hives, but they were capable of attacking an anthill, driving out the ants and remodelling the hill for themselves.

If one did not know, one would pass by the tangle of leaves, until one saw the mousebirds and the bul-buls hopping about on the ground near the anthills.

There are anthills, rushes, and other indications of not too rich a soil in this meadow, and in places the prickly restharrow grows among the grass, bearing its pink flower in summer.

As she had been in the spring, Hannah became her teacher once again, pointing out the flocks of robins and chickadees gorging in preparation for their flight south, half-built muskrat shelters woven with cattails and bulrushes, a red-bellied snake working its way into an abandoned anthill where it would sleep through the cold.

He pinched off some yellow rabbitbrush flowers and tossed them into the air just to be sure of the slight wind, then squatted again at the edge of a small open area populated by two medium-sized anthills and a cluster of prickly pear cactus.

But you probably think that an anthill is like a little city, with the queen as a dictator in control of everything.

Here in one box was an anthill with all its members scattered motionless about, motionless but on their feet, like a stopped frame in a motion picture film.

And then they seize me calmly, without malice, having known all along that it was bound to come to this in the end, and they strip me, they thrust the wooden stake into my heart, they nail me to a towering saguaro, they press me to death beneath flat rocks, they rub chollas into my eyes, they burn me alive, they bury me chest-deep in an anthill, they castrate me with their fingernails, all the while solemnly chanting, Schmeggege, schlemihl, schlemqzel, schmendrick, schlep!

The formalities over, I nodded to Zur, who turned on the row of view tables, Immediately, tri-D projections of the five anthills appeared, one over each table.

I would anticipate one question, and point out that if the training period seems both long and intense, remember the nature of our mission will require that much of the combat be done in the tunnels of the anthills.

The reports and data from the advance scout ships showed no significant additions to the anthills.

The first assignment of the flyers was to seal the anthills, using explosives to collapse the tunnels at and around their surface accesses.

I stared suspiciously at the View Screens for the other anthills, but no similar crashes occurred.

If anything, we were fortunate to only experience adverse weather at one of the five anthills.

Apparently the Communication Disrupters had prevented coordinated effort between the anthills, so each anthill had utilized the reserve unit in their own way before it too was drained of energy.