Mount Everest

An academic vice named after a mountaineer's shortest recorded answer.

George Mallory was asked by a New York reporter in 1923 why he wanted to climb Everest and said, because it's there; he died on the mountain the following year. The phrase turns his line into a criticism of research chosen for availability rather than usefulness. The mountain carries the name of George Everest, Surveyor General of India, who objected to the naming and pronounced his surname eve-rest rather than ever-est.