What is the term for a streamlined hill of glacial till?
Answer
drumlin
Answer
drumlin
The term for a streamlined hill of glacial till is a drumlin. Drumlins are elongated, teardrop-shaped hills molded beneath moving glacier ice, with their long axes generally aligned with the direction of ice flow.
A drumlin may be made largely of till, the unsorted mixture of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders deposited or reshaped by a glacier. Some also contain older sediment or a bedrock core, so not every drumlin has exactly the same internal structure. Groups of drumlins are called drumlin fields or swarms and can create a distinctive “basket of eggs” landscape.
The word comes from the Irish droimnín, meaning “little ridge,” and the landform was first described scientifically in the 19th century. Drumlins are often confused with eskers, but eskers are winding ridges of sediment deposited by meltwater streams beneath or within glaciers. Moraines are broader accumulations of glacial debris, while kames are irregular hills formed mainly by meltwater deposits.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026