high nelly
- idiom
- Archaic
:
de manera ostentosa
- She always dresses high nelly at family gatherings, drawing everyone's attention.
Examples
-
They celebrated their anniversary high nelly, renting a villa and hiring a private chef.
-
He decorated the whole house high nelly for the party, with gold streamers everywhere.
-
She decorated her house high nelly for the party.
-
Why do you always dress high nelly for casual outings?
-
He decorated the whole house high nelly for the party, with gold streamers everywhere.
-
They celebrated their anniversary high nelly, renting a villa and hiring a private chef.
-
She always dresses high nelly at family gatherings, drawing everyone's attention.
Synonyms
7
6.0
Using or spending much more than needed
6
5.7
Do something in a showy way to get attention
5
6.3
In a rich and expensive way
1
7.7
In a proud, showy way to seem more important than others
1
7.6
In a way that tries to seem more important or special than it is
Acting very fancy to show you are better than others
To act in a very proud way that ignores other people
Antonyms
How Pretentious
Surface Forms
Morphology
high + nelly
Although 'high' can suggest elevated, costly, or ostentatious, the second constituent 'nelly' is not a recognized lexical item here and offers no transparent semantic contribution; the phrase appears dialectal/idiomatic. Because one part is effectively opaque and the overall meaning ('overly extravagant or pretentious') is idiomatic rather than compositional, a B1 learner who merely knows the constituents would not reliably derive the intended sense.
Etymology
High nelly may come from one popular story about a woman called Nelly who always dressed very high and showy at parties, with big hats and gold. That's why high nelly means 'in an overly extravagant or pretentious manner'.