Tenzing Norgay

1 7.5

A Nepalese Sherpa mountain climber who with Sir Edmund Hillary reached the top of Mount Everest in 1953

proper noun

: Tenzing Norgay

In 1953, Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of the world's highest mountain.

Examples

In 1953, Tenzing Norgay became one of the first people to summit Mount Everest.
Many books have been written about the partnership between Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
Tenzing Norgay is celebrated around the world for his historic ascent of Mount Everest.
In 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest.
Did you know that Tenzing Norgay was a famous Sherpa?
Many climbers pay tribute to Tenzing Norgay for his pioneering contributions to mountaineering.
The achievement of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary is celebrated worldwide.

Surface Forms

Tenzing Norgay main

Morphology

Tenzing + Norgay

This is a proper name referring to a specific person; the constituent tokens are not regular lexical items with compositional meanings (dictionary entries are missing), so knowing the parts does not let a learner infer the referent or the biographical meaning. Personal names are culture- and item-specific and therefore unpredictable for a B1 learner, making the expression opaque.

Etymology

Tenzing Norgay was a Nepalese Sherpa mountain climber who, with Sir Edmund Hillary, was one of the first two people to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1953. Think of him as the strong guide helping at the snowy peak, and that's why his name is remembered as a symbol of the 'first climb to the top' of Everest.