Sometimes it is not easy to say if an organism has been found in an hilly or in a mountain area, especially at low elevations.
At school we are often told that mountain starts above 600 m a.s.l. but this seems just a convention.
I can only say that I have the feeling that hills, apart obviously being less tall, usually have less steep sides.
So, I wonder if there is an official straightforward definition of hill and mountain that can be easily used.
Thanks
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Right from Wiki:
Hill – landform in the form of a small elevation, rounded or oval in plan, with gentle slopes and a slightly pronounced foot.
Mountain – landform, isolated sharp uplift of the terrain with pronounced slopes and foot.
So, you’re right.
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My father’s definition: If you can get to the top in a day it’s a hill. If it takes longer it’s a mountain.
Or: If it has deer it’s a hill. If it has grizzly bears and mountain goats it’s a mountain.
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Moving from California to New York showed me that people have very different definitions of mountains…
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It’s not that hard to cover 2,000 meters of vertical distance in a day hike. Mount Whitney, California, is the highest summit in the lower 48 (contiguous USA) and the trail is 20.9 mi round trip with 6,646 feet of elevation gain from bottom to top and often done in 1 day. I don’t think anyone will call that a hill.
Where do you go to school? My house is at 1800 m above mean sea level, so I guess I live on a mountain.
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My father was seldom serious.
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Aside from the “small elevation”, that sounds like the definition of an volcano. Olympus mons, for example:
To answer the main question https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-difference-between-mountain-hill-and-peak-lake-and-pond-or-river-and-creek
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names once stated that the difference between a hill and a mountain was 1,000 feet of local relief, but this was abandoned in the early 1970s. Broad agreement on such questions is essentially impossible, which is why there are no official feature classification standards.
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You can just use “sopka” for any big hill or low mountain, the name is also used for volcanoes. Solves any problems.
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If it’s anything like defining the difference between a creek and a river, then hill vs. mountain is based on local conventions.
In the Southwest US, what we call a river might not even meet the criteria for a creek elsewhere.
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Lakes too. We can’t compete with Minnesota and Wisconsin.
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New Mexico is all hills then 
Mule deer on the side of “Lake Peak” (summit height 3782 m, observation coordinates at 3488 m) https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14603741
I say again my father was seldom serious. He would have called you a flatlander.
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In my area, which is arid, mountains have a distinct effect on flora and fauna (and weather) that hills might not. A mountain in the Southwest US can have multiple life zones ranging from desert-shrub/grassland at the base to spruce-fir forest or alpine grassland at the summit. I really like the term Sky Islands used to describe a particular set of mountain ranges in the SW US and NW Mexico — it’s an apt description.
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To give the others who aren’t lucky enough to live here a specific example: in 16 miles (25 km) as the crow flies, one goes from riparian habitat along Rio Grande to sagebrush grassland (Taos Plateau) to Pinyon juniper forest to mixed coniferous to subalpine fir & spruce to finally alpine tundra on the highest peak in the state - Wheeler Peak, 4,013 m. In EPA definition, this is 6 ‘level 4’ ecoregions.
Back to the original question, geologically a hill is an eroded mountain. There are some types of rock and soil more likely to produce smooth, low angle slopes and others that create mesas (basalt/lava flows over sedimentary rocks) and more that create jagged peaks (metamorphic and plutonic igneous). This profile is an east-west cut through the Sandia mountains of Albuquerque. Notice how it looks like a hill approaching from the east? That’s all continuous sedimentary beds (limestone, shale, and sandstone) that haven’t been subjected to Rio Grande erosion and rift valley on the west side. Granite (plutonic igneous) underlying the sedimentary rocks allow the steep cliffs to resist gravity, so it looks mountainous from the west side.
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If you want to get confused, first is from Khalynsk mountains which is a hill system. Second is a Uzun-Sirt mountain ridge, less than 150m high. I’m pretty sure some names are very much linked to what is around.
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If you think it’s hard in English, try Spanish. “Monte” is often translated as “mountain,” but it also means a wooded or thickly vegetated area without regard for topography. Mount Diablo in California was named after such a mistranslation: the Spanish were pursuing some Native warriors, and the warriors vanished, seemingly into thin air, in a dense thicket. The Spanish named the place “Monte del Diablo,” meaning the devil’s thicket, because the vanishing of the warriors seemed like witchery.
In Ecuador, montubios, meaning “dwellers in the monte” approximates the English word hillbillies. It does not refer to people in the high Andes, but to those in the coastal foothills.
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Hills are to elevation as mountains are to altitude, or hills are to climbing as mountains are to scaling.
I grew up with Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles - in Cape Town. And we have Signal Hill with the Noon Gun. Everyone recognises our iconic Mountain - from Wiki - Khoekhoe: Huriǂoaxa, lit. ‘sea-emerging’ !!
In Zurich the Hausberg is the Kaferberg. Ahem … that be a hill, and it’s called beetle. North Switzerland is the rolling hills of the Jura (similar to Belgium) They keep the Alps down South.
Your father sounds like an a person with an amazing sense of humor.
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Here in Wisconsin, the conventional wisdom is that our Baraboo Hills is the only place in the world that technically qualifies as a mountain range without having any peaks that are actually tall enough to be mountains. No idea if this is actually true, or something someone made up and everyone has just been going with.
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