summit fever

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English[edit]

Noun[edit]

summit fever (uncountable)

  1. (mountaineering) The compulsion to reach the summit of a mountain at all costs.
    • 2010, Daniel Dorr, Kissing Kilimanjaro:Leaving it All on Top of Africa, →ISBN:
      Now that we were so close on Kilimanjaro, summit fever was taking me again.
  2. (figurative, by extension) The obsessive need to complete a task.
    • 2004, Steve Donahue, Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change, →ISBN:
      We suffer from summit fever. We push just a little harder, hoping we can rest when we get to the top. When we postpone an oasis until our to-do list is finished or until we've answered all of the 193 emails in our in-box, then we have summit fever.