(In 8 rarely cordelier). [Sp. = mountain-chain, ‘the running along of a rocke in great length’ (Minsheu, 1599), f. cordilla, in OSp. string, rope, dim. of cuerda:—L. chorda cord, rope.]
A mountain chain or ridge, one of a series of parallel ridges; in pl. applied originally by the Spaniards to the parallel chains of the Andes in South America (las Cordilleras de los Andes), subsequently extended to the continuation of the same system through Central America and Mexico.
Some geographers in the U. S. have proposed to transfer the name to the more or less parallel chains of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, with their intervening ridges and tablelands, termed by them the Cordilleran region; but this is not approved of by European geographers.
1704. Collect. Voy. (Church.), III. 12/1. The Cordillera grows rougher.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., I. 60. Pinchinca, one of the Cordeliers, immediately under the line.
1816. Keatinge, Trav. (1817), I. 212. A cordillera and an atom are wielded or cast with equal facility by her [Nature’s] powerful hand.
1833. Penny Cycl., I. 519/1. (s.v. Andes) At the northern limit of the group of Loxa … the main range divides into two subordinate chains, or cordilleras.
1879. Dana, Man. Geol. (ed. 3), 15. A cordillera includes all the mountain-chains in the whole great belt of high land that borders a continent.
fig. 1781. Archer, in Naval Chron., XI. 290. The ship upon a bed of rocks, mountains of them on one side, and cordeliers of water on the other.
