highfalutin
/ˌhaɪ.fəˈlu.tɪn/
highfalutin adjective: self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical.
Adjective
highfalutin (comparative more highfalutin, superlative most highfalutin)
- Self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical.
- It's only a matter of time before some highfalutin developer builds a huge hotel and ruins the scenery.
- That one Cajun that moved to Austin is too highfalutin to come back to Livingston Parish. He's over there with that mean bread lady!
- Synonyms:
- bombast, hoity-toity, pretentious
Noun
highfalutin (uncountable)
- Pompous speech or writing.
- Don't write so much highfalutin next time.1865, Benn Pitman, The Assassination of President Lincoln: And the Trial of the Conspirators, page 43
- "We will, we will," shouted the Puddin'-owners; but the Puddin' said sourly: "This is all very well, all this high falutin'."1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 169
highfalutin meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
highfalutin in Tamil
- மிக உயர்ந்ததாயும்
highfalutin in Urdu
- بڑھی چڑھی, لفاظ, شیخی باز
highfalutin in Malayalam
- pretentious, ostentatious, affected
- അനാവശ്യപദപ്രയോഗമുള്ള, ശബ്ദാഡംബരമുള്ള, വ്യാജവേഷമായ, ഉദ്ധതമായ, കപടവേഷമായ, പൊങ്ങച്ചം കാട്ടുന്ന
Examples of highfalutin in a sentence
- His speech was very highfalutin.
- As a rhetorical maneuver, invoking common sense has the advantage of distancing oneself from a complicated, highfalutin legal analysis.2026 May 29, Will Baude, Richard Re, “The Supreme Court’s common sense problem”, in SCOTUSblog, archived from the original on 06 Jun 2026:
Synonyms of highfalutin
Forms of highfalutin
| comparative | more highfalutin |
|---|---|
| superlative | most highfalutin |
| alternative form | hifalutin |
| alternative form | hifalutin' |
| alternative form | hifaluting |
| alternative form | highfalutin' |
| alternative form | highfaluting |
| alternative form | high-falutin |
| alternative form | high-falutin' |
| alternative form | high-faluting |
| alternative form | high falutin |
| alternative form | high falutin' |
| alternative form | high faluting |
Origin of highfalutin
Possible an alteration of high-fluting. Another speculation connects the term with high-flighting/-flying. First appears c. 1839 in the Spirit of the Times.
Words formed from highfalutin
Questions about highfalutin
- What does highfalutin mean?
- Highfalutin means self-important, pompous; arrogant or egotistical.
- What is highfalutin in Tamil?
- Highfalutin in Tamil is மிக உயர்ந்ததாயும். See Highfalutin meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use highfalutin in a sentence?
- His speech was very highfalutin.
- What part of speech is highfalutin?
- Highfalutin can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce highfalutin?
- Highfalutin is pronounced /ˌhaɪ.fəˈlu.tɪn/ (US).
Words near highfalutin in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: highfalutin (page history and authors); highfalutin (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); highfalutin (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); highfalutin (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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-us-highfalutin.ogg, en-au-highfalutin.ogg.
Cite this entry: “highfalutin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/highfalutin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.