Talk:high

Career high

There's a few more noun sense needed here, like in "Winning the World Cup finished my career on a high" --Dictionarybuilder 09:54, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

PIE *keuk- < *keu-

What does this base here mean? "to glow, to shine"? "to burn, to light"? "to see, to hear"? "to swell"? "to bend"? "to totter"? Hbrug 06:13, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Other adjectives and noun forms

What about high as used in describing languages? "High German, Low German, Low Saxon, etc. OjdvQ9fNJWl (talk) 03:33, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That refers to elevation at which the language is spoken. "High" German is spoken in southern Germany, towards the Alps, while "Low" German is spoken in the north, closer to sea level. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

High German, Hochdeutsch, Høgnorsk, High Elvish

For discussion of the meaning and etymology of "high" in language names, see Wiktionary:Etymology_scriptorium/2016/February#high_languages. - -sche (discuss) 01:41, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

high-paid

We already have low-paid --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:49, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

High wind

I am curious as to why high is used for strong winds etc --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:24, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: June–July 2021

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high

Adj. sense 4:

(in several set phrases) Remote in distance or time.

high latitude, high antiquity

RFV "remote in distance", especially. Per Wiktionary:Tea_room/2021/June#high, there is significant doubt that "high" in "high latitude" means "remote", and clearer examples seem to be needed to verify the existence of this sense. It has also been queried whether "high" in "high antiquity" means "remote" or simply something like "very great". Generally, seeking further or better examples of these "several set phrases" to put this entry on a more solid footing. Mihia (talk) 12:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I can find google books:"high polar areas" and google books:"high Arctic areas", google books:"high Arctic and Antarctic zones", which seems to be using the same meaning in at least some citations, namely the parts of the polar/Arctic/Antarctic zones which are most remote from the equator(?). (Century is explicit than the meaning is "remote from the equator", not just "remote in distance".) We'll be doing one better than other dictionaries—which cover high latitude under high and define it as "remote" but don't provide any other collocations—if we either find other collocations or move(?) the content to high latitude. - -sche (discuss) 00:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I can also find google books:"high longitudes", e.g. "This cutoff in the number of H₂CO clouds at high longitudes strongly suggests that the wide-line, high-velocity molecular clouds are located near the center of the Galaxy", but it is not immediately clear to me what high means here.
To This,that's point about "high antiquity" being comparable to "the height of antiquity" I would add that I can also find a few citations like google books:"the height of British history". - -sche (discuss) 00:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that "high Arctic" can again be explained as "high" on a conventional map/globe, but "high Antarctic" is an interesting one (assuming the phrase does not refer to elevation, of course, which it seems it sometimes doesn't). Mihia (talk) 14:08, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I added some cites to the entry: "the pack ice region of the high Antarctic", "Svalbard, South Georgia and other high-polar areas", "petrels, which breed primarily in the high Antarctic [on] the Rauer Islands", "high polar areas" (which the sentence scopes as including an Antarctic sea, so not "high up" on the globe or in elevation), and "high (sub-Antarctic) latitudes"; there's also the "zones" cites linked above. I wonder if we should split the "remote from the equator" and "remote in time" senses, as the "remote in time" sense is subject to a distinct set of doubts vs the "remote from the equator" sense. - -sche (discuss) 18:24, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Certainly (regarding the Tea Room suggestion that "high antiquity" is "utmost antiquity"), on the spectrum of senses this word has, both the "distant from the equator" and "distant in time" senses seem to be near the "to the utmost extent or culmination, or [...] degree" sense, since the high latitudes, polar areas, etc are the furthest latitudes, the utmost Antarctic areas, etc. (And, appropriately, the senses are relatively near each other in the entry.) - -sche (discuss) 18:31, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Looking for this phrase now, I realize that citations of "high future" seem to mean "lofty future", like google books:"belief in the high future of his native land", which raises the question of whether the "high past" cite (which I added a few years ago) is actually "lofty past, past when things were at their height" (connectable to the suggestion in the Tea Room that "high antiquity" could just refer to "the height of antiquity"). I.e., we may actually have more solid evidence of "remote in distance from the equator" than remote in time, now. - -sche (discuss) 15:04, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

If the only "remote in distance" examples that we can find are the polar ones, this does in my opinion very much keep alive the possibility that all these uses stem from the ideas of "high numerical latitude" and/or "high on a globe/map, also later translated to the other end of the globe", in which case the fact that these regions are also "remote from the equator" is merely a consequence that naturally follows, and may as well be "close to one of the Poles". Like you, I did also wonder about the "high past" quote, whether it in fact the same meaning as e.g. "the High Middle Ages", which is presently listed under a different sense. Mihia (talk) 08:51, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what places other than ones remote from the equator a sense of "remote in distance from the equator" could refer to. (Maybe "South Africa is higher than Namibia"?) I think the fact that one can refer to areas low on the globe as high, in so many phrases (that specifically mean latitude / distance from the equator rather than elevation/altitude or the like, and might otherwise have to be viewed as a number of set phrases), and that so many other dictionaries accept it as a sense, shows that it exists at least as a subsense, even if we want to sort it under or near a "high/large in numbers" sense. In fact, I notice that while the (old) OED does handle it as a subsense of "of great amount, [...] or value", "c. Geog. Of latitude: Denoted by a high number; at a great distance from the equator", they have an citation just like my invented Namibian one, (a slightly different edition of what I can find at Google Books as)

• 1786, John Wesley, The Magazine of the Wesleyan Methodist Church:

  It then spread into North Britain and Ireland, and a few years after, into New York, Pennsylvania, and many other Provinces in America, even as high as Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

(An example that actually used Namibia would of course be clearer, since this could still be viewed as "high on the globe", despite the OED's interpretation otherwise.) - -sche (discuss) 18:09, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

The OED definition "Of latitude: Denoted by a high number" is consistent with my own feeling about this usage. The question remains for me whether "at a great distance from the equator" is actually a definition of the word "high" or just a consequence of numerically high latitudes being far from the equator, if you get my drift. In other words, as I mentioned, would "close to a Pole" be just as good an explanation? On the Wesley quote, despite what the OED might imply, I think it is likely that "high" here means "high on a map/globe". Mihia (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

RFV-resolved. Changed to refer only to lattitude, as there is insufficient evidence for remote in time. Kiwima (talk) 23:02, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I tweaked it a little further to incorporate Mihia's language (in paraphrase) about the latitude having a high number. - -sche (discuss) 00:18, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: January 2023

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high

Rfv-sense: "Thought; intention; determination; purpose". According to the OED, descendants of Old English hyġe apparently do not survive beyond the Early Middle English period. In any case, the expected modern English reflex should be *hie or *hye, not "high"; compare the development of lie and rye from Old English lyġe and ryġe respectively. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 18:05, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Given that it has the same wording I think this was cribbed from the OED without paying attention to the fact that the latter's citations end in 1250. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 01:04, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

RFV-failed This, that and the other (talk) 03:58, 30 January 2023 (UTC)