Word.ws English Dictionary

high-toned

high-toned adjective: having a pretentious, high-class attitude.

Adjective

high-toned (comparative more high-toned, superlative most high-toned)

  1. Having a pretentious, high-class attitude
    • A robber is more high-toned than what a pirate is—as a general thing. In most countries they’re awful high up in the nobility—dukes and such.1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 272
    • Maybe real estate developers with friends on the City Council have wanted to convert Hennepin Avenue, where the Locker Room and the bookstores are located, into a higher-toned entertainment district.1979 December 29, Rick Hillegas, “Minneapolis Raid Nets 125 Men”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 23, page 3

Forms of high-toned

comparativemore high-toned
superlativemost high-toned

Questions about high-toned

What does high-toned mean?
High-toned means having a pretentious, high-class attitude.
What part of speech is high-toned?
High-toned is an adjective.

Words near high-toned in the dictionary

  1. high-test peroxides
  2. high-ticket
  3. high-tide
  4. high-tides
  5. high-time
  6. high-toned
  7. high-top
  8. high-top fade
  9. high-tops
  10. high-touch
  11. high-up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: high-toned (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.

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