El Muerto
- proper noun
- Climbers from around the world attempt to reach the summit of El Muerto each year.
Examples
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The border between Argentina and Chile runs across El Muerto in the Andes.
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Weather conditions on El Muerto can be extremely harsh due to its high altitude.
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I climbed El Muerto last summer.
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Have you ever visited El Muerto?
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Climbers from around the world attempt to reach the summit of El Muerto each year.
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The border between Argentina and Chile runs across El Muerto in the Andes.
-
Weather conditions on El Muerto can be extremely harsh due to its high altitude.
Surface Forms
Morphology
El + Muerto
This is a Spanish proper name composed of elements meaning 'the' + 'dead' rather than a descriptive label for a mountain; knowing the literal constituents (if the learner knew Spanish) would yield 'the dead' but would not allow a B1 learner to infer that it is the name of a specific peak or its geographic sense. The constituents are not English dictionary items here and the MWE functions as an opaque toponym, so its referential meaning (a mountain peak) is not derivable from the parts.
Etymology
El Muerto comes from Spanish and literally means 'the dead one'. Muerto is the Spanish word for 'dead'. One popular story says the mountain looks like a person lying down, so people called the peak El Muerto, and that is why the name refers to this mountain today.
