🗿 A famous monument 4️⃣ Top four people

Mount Rushmore

4.2

A group of four people seen as the most important in a field

proper noun
/maʊnt ˈrʌʃmɔr/

: Mount Rushmore

Is there any Mount Rushmore of fiction books?

All right, I'm curious, what to you is your Mount Rushmore of Luda guest versus your top four of all time?

Examples

Dad, who's on Mount Rushmore?

My Fellow Americans (1996)
So yeah, those guys are they own that Mount Rushmore for sure, man.
If give me your, give me your Mount Rushmore of comedians.
The group then was joined by Tom Morello on the Mount Rushmore of guitar players of all time.
All right, I'm curious, what to you is your Mount Rushmore of Luda guest versus your top four of all time?

First We Feast
I, you know, I started, I, this Jason Nash, who's, you know, obviously on the Mount Rushmore, the block squad.
Many fans consider Michael Jordan part of the Mount Rushmore of basketball players.
In the debate about the greatest authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald is often mentioned on the Mount Rushmore of American literature.
For many historians, Albert Einstein belongs on the Mount Rushmore of significant figures in science.

Surface Forms

Mount Rushmore main

Morphology

mount + Rushmore

The figurative sense relies on knowledge that Mount Rushmore is a monument showing four iconic presidential faces, so a learner who knows the constituents (including that Rushmore features four famous figures) can infer a metaphor meaning 'the top four or most iconic people' in a field. However, this is a culturally specific, named-reference metaphor rather than a regular compositional pattern, so understanding depends on background knowledge and is not fully predictable from general word-combination rules.

Etymology

Mount Rushmore is also used as a picture for a group's four most important people because the real mountain shows four giant, honored faces. That's why saying someone is on the 'Mount Rushmore' of a field means they are one of the 'top four' figures.