1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. high-flown

Find the word definition

What is "high-flown"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
high-flown
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Clark never developed high-flown ideas about saving the world.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And Jack, her husband, had had some high-flown notion of dedicating the lad to the cause.
▪ Besides, none of them had any sense of humour and I ruined many a high-flown discussion by making jokes.
▪ I should know by now that heavy drinkers are awfully fond of high-flown rationalisations for any brief spell of abstinence.
▪ Such a description might sound high-flown for a small, transitory occasion.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
High-flown

High-flown \High"-flown`\, a.

  1. Elevated; proud. ``High-flown hopes.''
    --Denham.

  2. Turgid; extravagant; bombastic; inflated; as, high-flown language.
    --M. Arnold.

Wiktionary
high-flown

a. 1 pretentiously eloquent; highly figurative 2 lofty, extravagant, refined

WordNet
high-flown

  1. adj. pretentious (especially with regard to language or ideals); "high-flown talk of preserving the moral tone of the school"; "a high-sounding dissertation on the means to attain social revolution" [syn: high-sounding, inflated]

  2. of high moral or intellectual value; elevated in nature or style; "an exalted ideal"; "argue in terms of high-flown ideals"- Oliver Franks; "a noble and lofty concept" [syn: exalted, high-minded, lofty, rarefied, rarified, idealistic, noble-minded]

Usage examples of "high-flown".

Casanova, after airing her high-flown ideas, began to sulk with her lover.

The credulity of the Parisians, and their love of high-flown bombast, amount to a disease, which, if this city is not to sink into a species of Baden Baden, must be stamped out.

The preambles of treaties are always drawn up in the choicest Pecksniffian style, and the more sinister the designs of a politician, the more high-flown, as a rule, becomes the nobility of his language.

Casanova, after airing her high-flown ideas, began to sulk with her lover.

I then burst into a very high-flown eulogium of her intellectual capacity, so as to enlist her vanity in the good cause.

What did she want with those pointless, high-flown bits of information like the ones she'd learned in high school-Ontogeny recapitulates phytogeny and Synecdoche is the use of the part to symbolize the whole?