high
Definitions
General English
- adverb above; up in the air
General Science
- adjective reaching far from ground level
- adjective of greater than average amount
- adjective at the top of something
Accounting
- noun a point where prices or sales are very large
Aviation
- adjective having great vertical distance
- noun an area of high atmospheric pressure
Electronics
- Having a great degree of a given magnitude, quantity, or characteristic. Also, having a greater degree of a magnitude, quantity, or characteristic relative to something else. For example, high energy, high voltage, high impedance, and so on.
- On the upper end of a given interval or spectrum. Also, that part of an interval or spectrum which is greater than another. For instance, the frequencies which a high-pass filter transmits, as opposed to those it blocks.
- In a binary operation, a 1, which also corresponds to on, as opposed to low, which corresponds to 0, or off.
Food
- adjective used for describing meat, especially game, that has been kept until it is beginning to rot and has a strong flavour
Slang
- adjective intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, euphoric. The expression ‘high as a kite’ preceded the shorter usage which became widespread in the late 1960s.
Travel
- adjective going far above other things
Origin & History of “high”
High is an ancient word. It goes right back to Indo-European *koukos, which is related to a number of terms denoting roughly ‘rounded protuberance’: Sanskrit kucas ‘breast’, for instance, Russian húcha ‘heap’, and Lithuanian kaukas ‘swelling, boil’. Evidently the notion of ‘tallness’, central to modern English high, is historically a secondary development from the notion of being ‘heaped up’ or ‘arched up’. The Germanic descendant of *koukos was *khaukhaz, which produced German hoch, Dutch hoog, Swedish hög, Danish hoj, and English high. Height is a derivative of *khaukh-.
