> as lemmas

a1500 in R. L. Greene Early Eng. Carols (1935) 269 (MED) Whan..myse move movntans with wagyng of ther tayles..Than put women in trust and confydens.

1582 Bible (Rheims) Matt. xxi. 21 If you shal haue faith, and stagger not,..and if you shal say to this mountaine, Take vp and throw thy self into the sea, it shal be done.

1582 Bible (Rheims) 1 Cor. xiii. 2 If I should haue al faith so that I could remoue mountains, and haue not charitie, I am nothing.]

1584 W. Warner Pan his Syrinx xxxvii. 109 With importunate sutes, charming words, intising giftes, oportunitie of time, and place, and by a thousand other deuises of sufficiencie to moue mountaynes.

1602 F. Herring tr. J. Oberndorf Anatomyes True Physition 14 Vaunting Pollicitations of binding Beares, and moouing Mountaines.

a1798 R. Munford Candidates i. i, in Coll. Plays & Poems (1798) ii. 23 There's Strutabout, now, he'll promise to move mountains. He'll make the rivers navigable, and bring the tide over the tops of the hills, for a vote.

1848 Littell's Living Age 15 Jan. 114/2 I can't pray—I could as easily move a mountain by an effort of my will.

1873 R. Browning Red Cotton Night-cap Country iv. 225 If insufficient faith have done thus much,..More would move mountains, you are warrant.

1929 A. Huxley Let. 9 May (1969) 311 The fact that faith can't move mountains is one of the corner-stones of tragedy—also of comedy.

1972 Last Whole Earth Catal. (Portola Inst.) 16/2 Solipsist tyrants, believing that their will, like their eyeballs, could move mountains, have come to believe that it should trample over these small annoying figures in their visual field.

1995 Q June 117/3 A devoted public..move mountains to catch as many of his performances as possible.