Highとは 意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• enPR: hī, IPA: /haɪ/, [haɪ̯]
• 韻: -aɪ
• 異形同音異義語: hi, Hi, hie

語源 1

From 中期英語 high, heigh, heih, from 古期英語 hēah (“high, tall, lofty, high-class, exalted, sublime, illustrious, important, proud, haughty, deep, right”), from Proto-West Germanic *hauh (“high”), from Proto-Germanic *hauhaz (“high”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewk- (“to bend; crooked”).

別の表記

• heigh (dialectal)
• hi (informal)

形容詞

high (comparative higher, superlative highest)

1. Physically elevated, extending above a base or average level:
   1. Very elevated; extending or being far above a base; tall; lofty.

      The balloon rose high in the sky.   The wall was high.   a high mountain

      • 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 13 p. 214:

        Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole,
        Those Quirristers are pearcht with many a speckled breast.

      • 1930, Philip Sidney Smith, Mineral Industry of Alaska in 1928 and Administration Report:

        The Chitistone River Valley offers a more direct route for travel from McCarthy to the White River and the Shushana gold placers than Skolai Creek, but it involves a high climb over the so-called “goat trail” to avoid the canyon above Chitistone[.]

      • 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 188, number 26, archived from the original on 26 April 2025, page 36:

        Like most human activities, ballooning has sponsored heroes and hucksters and a good deal in between. For every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

   2. Relatively elevated; rising or raised above the average or normal level from which elevation is measured.
      • 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:

        She was like a Beardsley Salome, he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry. His wooing had been brief but incisive.

      • 1919, Martha Van Rensselaer, Flora Rose, Helen Canon, A Manual of Home-Making, page 376:

        A nightgown with a high neck and long sleeves may have the fullness set into a yoke.

      • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎, archived from the original on 24 January 2025:

        The concrete floors of B2B sheds were already being built to an exacting degree of flatness, calibrated using lasers, so that forklifts would not teeter while lifting pallets to the highest shelves.

   3. (baseball, of a ball) Above the batter's shoulders.

      the pitch (or: the ball) was high

   4. Pertaining to (or, especially of a language: spoken in) in an area which is at a greater elevation, for example more mountainous, than other regions.
2. Having a specified elevation or height; tall.

   three feet high   three Mount Everests high

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.

3. Elevated in status, esteem, or prestige, or in importance or development; exalted in rank, station, or character.

   The oldest of the elves' royal family still conversed in High Elvish.

   • 1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC:

     The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places.

   • 2007, Sheila Finch, Shaper's Legacy, →ISBN, page 122:

     Not a one of them was old enough to know what the high past of Liani separatism had really been like.

   1. Most exalted; foremost.

      the high priest, the high officials of the court, the high altar

   2. Of great importance and consequence: grave (if negative) or solemn (if positive).

      high crimes, the high festival of the sun

   3. Consummate; advanced (e.g. in development) to the utmost extent or culmination, or possessing a quality in its supreme degree, at its zenith.

      high (i.e. intense) heat; high (i.e. full or quite) noon; high (i.e. rich or spicy) seasoning; high (i.e. complete) pleasure; high (i.e. deep or vivid) colour; high (i.e. extensive, thorough) scholarship; high tide; high [tourism] season; the High Middle Ages

      • 1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “(please specify the sonnet number or title)”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC:

        High time it is this war now ended were.

      • 1709-1710, Thomas Baker, Reflections on Learning

        High sauces and rich spices are fetch'd from the Indies.

   4. Advanced in complexity (and hence potentially abstract and/or difficult to comprehend).
      • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

        to hear and answer such high things

      • 1802, William Wordsworth, England 1802:

        Plain living and high thinking are no more.

4. (of an opinion or practice, obsolete outside set phrases) Extreme, excessive; now specifically very traditionalist and conservative.

   high church   High Tory

   • 1591, Henry Barrow, A Plaine Refutation of M. G. Giffardes reprochful booke […]‎, page 33:

     Furder, what wil you answeare for your keping a daye, cessation &c to St. Michael & al Angells? how wil you excuse your self of most high idolatrie, advancing your self in thinges you neuer sawe, rashlie puffed vp of your fleshlie minde, and not holding the heade, depriuing others of their Crowne?

   • 1858, Joseph Howe, Speeches and Public Letters, page 346:

     The letter of a "Pioneer" was sent to the Chronicle office by a very respectable man, of a high conservative family, but whose interests have been injuriously affected by the constant fluctuations in the commercial policy of England.

   • 1875, Henry Reeve, “Introductory Notice”, in Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve, Democracy in America, page xvi:

     His family was ardently royalist, and might be compared to a high Tory family on this side the water; with some change of conditions, their prejudices and disposition of the mind were the same.

   • 2005, Jesse D. Geller, John C. Norcross, David E. Orlinsky, The Psychotherapist's Own Psychotherapy, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 69:

     My father was the youngest son of a High-Church and high Tory family, the politically leftwing and religiously Nonconformist rebel; and antiimperialist who nearly lost his position in the City by refusing to sign his firm's pro–Boer War petition.

5. Elevated in mood; marked by great merriment, excitement, etc.

   in high spirits

   • 1970, Grateful Dead, High Time, on the album Workingman's Dead

     I was having a high time, living the good life.

6. (of a lifestyle) Luxurious; rich.

   high living, the high life

   • 2010, Rose Maria McCarthy Anding., High Heels, Honey Lips, & White Powder:

     I was living the high lifestyle in famous sex clubs, relaxing on luxurious sofas, in the saunas and whirlpools, enjoying moments of excitement with my male and female companions while sipping champagne from crystal glasses.

7. Lofty, often to the point of arrogant, haughty, boastful, proud.

   a high tone

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 21:4:

     An high looke, and a proud heart, […] is sinne.

   • 1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the [Sheldonian] Theater:

     His forces, after all the high discourses, amounted really but to eighteen hundred foot.

8. (with on or about) Keen, enthused.
   • 2016, David Chan, Enabling Positive Attitudes and Experiences in Singapore, page 140:

     "Conversely, just because I am not high on positivity, it does not mean I am necessarily high on negativity."

   • 2010, Lena, quoted by S. Rosenbloom, The Multiracial Urban High School: Fearing Peers and Trusting Friends (→ISBN), chapter four:

     I'm not that high about the relationship.

9. (of a body of water) With tall waves.
   • 1939, Agatha Christie, chapter 11, in And Then There Were None:

     The sea is as high as ever. I shouldn't think any boat could put out today.

10. Remote (to the north or south) from the equator; situated at (or constituting) a latitude which is expressed by a large number.

    high latitude, fish species in high arctic and antarctic areas

    • 1966, Symposium on Antarctic Oceanography: Papers, page 242:

      But other euphausiids, Euphausia crystallorophias, are found in the pack ice region of the high Antarctic as food of Blue and Minke Whales (Marr, 1956). E. vallentini is very important in the lower Antarctic region, around […]

    • 1990, International Union of Game Biologists, Transactions, the XIXth IUGB Congress: Population dynamics, Congress, page 219:

      We predict that L. arctica will coincide with the whole reindeer-caribou distribution, probably excepted Svalbard, South Georgia and other high-polar areas.

    • 1999, Peter John Hodum, Foraging Ecology and Reproductive Energetics of Antarctic Fulmarine Petrels, page 8:

      […] petrels, which breed primarily in the high Antarctic, the Rauer Islands are fairly central in their breeding distribution. This study documents the breeding biology of these four species of fulmarine petrels on Hop Island, Rauer Islands during  […]

    • 2004, Berichte zur Polar- und Meeresforschung, volumes 481-483, page 1:

      Except for some lithodid crabs that have recently been found in the Antarctic Bellingshausen Sea (Klages et al., 1995; Arana and Retamal, 2000), reptants are not known from high polar areas, where water temperature at the seafloor drops permanently below about 0°C.

    • 2007, Zoological Studies, volume 46, iissues 1-3, page 371:

      This study also analyzed the sources of variations over an environmental gradient extending from low (subtropical) to high (sub-Antarctic) latitudes.

11. Large, great (in amount or quantity, value, force, energy, etc).

    My bank charges me a high interest rate.

    I was running a high temperature and had high cholesterol.

    high voltage   high prices   high winds   a high number

    • 1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

      Can heavenly minds such high resentment show?

    • 2005, Tracy Martin, How To Diagnose and Repair Automotive Electrical Systems‎, page 16:

      Ignition voltage needs to be high enough to overcome the high resistance created by the air gap.

    • 2013 July-August, Fenella Saunders, “Tiny Lenses See the Big Picture”, in American Scientist:

      The single-imaging optic of the mammalian eye offers some distinct visual advantages. Such lenses can take in photons from a wide range of angles, increasing light sensitivity. They also have high spatial resolution, resolving incoming images in minute detail.

    • 2020 September 14, Richard H. Pildes, “The three words that can avert an election nightmare”, in CNN‎:

      Studies also show that absentee ballots cast by voters who are younger or from racial and ethnic minority groups are rejected at higher rates than other absentee ballots.

    1. Having a large or comparatively larger concentration of (a substance, which is often but not always linked by "in" when predicative).

       Carrots are high in vitamin A.   made from a high-copper alloy

    • 1907, The American Exporter, volume 60, page 101:

      Anyone can determine for himself whether certain wire is high carbon or not. Heat a piece of the wire red hot and while red plunge into water till cold.

12. (acoustics) Acute or shrill in pitch, due to being of greater frequency, i.e. produced by more rapid vibrations (wave oscillations).

    The note was too high for her to sing.

13. (phonetics) Made with some part of the tongue positioned high in the mouth, relatively close to the palate.
14. (card games) Greater in value than other cards, denominations, suits, etc.
    1. (poker) Having the highest rank in a straight, flush or straight flush.

       I have KT742 of the same suit. In other words, a K-high flush.

       9-high straight = 98765 unsuited

       Royal Flush = AKQJT suited = A-high straight flush

    2. (of a card or hand) Winning; able to take a trick, win a round, etc.

       North's hand was high. East was in trouble.

       • 1894, Harper's Magazine, volume 88, page 910:

         Cutler pushed forward the two necessary white chips. No one's hand was high, and Loomis made a slight winning.

15. (of meat, especially venison) Strong-scented; slightly tainted/spoiled; beginning to decompose.

    Epicures do not cook game before it is high.

    The tailor liked his meat high.

    • 1991, Stephen King, Needful Things:

      What he did know was this: something about the situation smelled wrong. Something about it smelled as high as dead fish that have spent three days in the hot sun.

16. (informal) Intoxicated; under the influence of a mood-altering drug, formerly usually alcohol, but now (from the mid-20th century) usually not alcohol but rather marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.
    • 2018, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content (webcomic), 3879: Pointy Boi:

      "Three extremely high people showing up at the animal shelter like WE FOUND A DOG would be really funny, but..."

17. (nautical, of a sailing ship) Near, in its direction of travel, to the (direction of the) wind.
    • 1784, William Falconer, An Universal Dictionary of the Marine: Or, A Copious Explanation:

      NO NEARER! (arrive! Fr.) the command given by the pilot of quarter-master, to the helmsman, to steer the ship no higher to the direction of the wind than the sails will operate to advance the ship in her course.

18. (sports such as soccer) Positioned up the field, towards the opposing team's goal.

    Our defensive line is too high.

同意語

• haute, hawt
• (elevated): See Thesaurus:tall
• (intoxicated): See Thesaurus:stoned or Thesaurus:drunk

反意語

• low

下位語

派生語