high-hat
high-hat adjective: disdainful; haughty. Also the alternative form of hi-hat.
Adjective
high-hat (comparative more high-hat, superlative most high-hat)
- disdainful; haughty
- If she hasn't time for this or that, if she refuses to make or keep appointments, if her face does not greet all comers with a sweet and charming smile, then the word is passed around that ‘So-and-So is getting high-hat and up-stage.’1929 December, Betty Boone, “The Price of this Stardom”, in Screenland, page 22
- Synonyms:
- airy, arrogant, chesty, authoritarian, biggity, big-headed, blustery, turgescent, boastful, lordly
Noun
high-hat (plural high-hats)
- A person who acts in a superior manner.
- A large pill of opium for smoking.
- A young Chinese woman with a plait down to her waist bowed to them both and then continued cutting up the bricks of opium into smaller pieces. […] "High-hats. Five dollars a pound," he explained to Mannion, pointing to the large pills or 'pocks' that the girl held over a candle flame at the end of...2011, Dominic Lagan, The Coming Storm
- Synonyms:
- aunti/aunti Emma, big O, chandu, Chinese tobacco, dopium, dream gun, dream stick, fi-do-nie, gee, God's medicine
- A low camera mount without tripod legs.
Verb
high-hat (third-person singular simple present high-hats, present participle high-hatting, simple past and past participle high-hatted)
- To snub or treat condescendingly.
- I don't high-hat technical words, because I know there a lot of things that can't be said any other way, but the doctor's lengthy explanation simply boiled down to this, that[…].1934, Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance, Bantam, published 1992, →ISBN, page 139
Also used as
high-hat is also the alternative form of hi-hat.
Synonyms of high-hat
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- bombastic
- cocky
- conceited
- disdainful
- domineering
- egotistical
- entitled
- flaunting
- full of oneself
- grandiose
- hankty
- haughty
- high-handed
- high and mighty
- highfalutin
- hoity-toity
- holier-than-thou
- hubristic
- hubristical
- imperious
- inflated
- insolent
- la-di-da
- ostentatious
- overbearing
- overweening
- pompous
- presumptuous
- pretentious
- priggish
Forms of high-hat
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more high-hat |
| superlative | most high-hat |
| Noun | |
| plural | high-hats |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | high-hats |
| present participle | high-hatting |
| past participle | high-hatted |
| past | high-hatted |
Questions about high-hat
- What does high-hat mean?
- High-hat means disdainful; haughty.
- What part of speech is high-hat?
- High-hat can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
Words near high-hat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: high-hat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-high-hat.ogg.
Cite this entry: “high-hat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/high-hat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.