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:''For the mountain in New Hampshire, see Mount Monadnock. For the Chicago skyscraper, see Monadnock Building.''


A 'monadnock' or 'inselberg' is an isolated hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In southern and southern-central Africa, a similar formation of granite is known as a kopje from the Afrikaans word: ''koppie''. In fact the word ''koppie'' is itself frequently employed in written South African English.
Monadnock is an originally Native American term for an isolated hill or a lone mountain that has risen above the surrounding area, typically by surviving erosion. The name was taken from Mount Monadnock in southwestern New Hampshire (USA), in Jaffrey. The name is thought to derive from the Abenaki language, from either ''menonadenak'' ("smooth mountain") or ''menadena'' ("isolated mountain").
The word ''inselberg'' is German for "island mountain"; the name was originally coined to describe the abundant such features found in southern Africa. The term monadnock is more usually used in the US.

Contents

Formation

Examples of monadnocks

See also

Formation

Inselbergs are typically, though not only, formed in tropical areas. Volcanic or other processes may give rise to a body of rock resistant to erosion, inside a body of softer rock such as sandstone which is more susceptible to erosion. When the less resistant rock is eroded away to form a plain, the more resistant rock is left behind as an isolated mountain. If the inselberg is dome-shaped and formed from granite-gneiss, it can also be called a bornhardt.

Examples of monadnocks

Notable inselbergs include:

★ Mount Monadnock, New Hampshire, USA; the mountain which the name was taken from

★ Suilven in Scotland

★ Crowder's Mountain, near Kings Mountain, NC

★ Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

★ Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta in Australia

★ Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA

★ Mount Ascutney, Vermont, USA

★ Katahdin, Maine, USA

★ Panola Mountain, Georgia, USA

★ Paris Mountain, Greenville, SC, USA

★ Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, USA

★ Rib Mountain, Wisconsin, USA

★ Willis Mountain, Virginia, USA

★ Enchanted Rock, Texas, USA

★ Mulanje Massif in Malawi

★ Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland, USA

★ Gaff Topsails in Newfoundland, Canada

★ Mount Sylvester in Newfoundland, Canada

★ Little Mountain, Newberry County, SC

See also

★ USS ''Monadnock'' (1883) was a United States Navy ironclad warship.

★ Monadnock Building, Chicago, one of the tallest masonry buildings in the world.

★ Monolith

★ Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote a long poem on Monadnoc and for whom the NH mountain was a recurring symbol.