highfalutin
- adjective
- /haɪˈfælʊtɪn/
- Informal
- During the meeting, his highfalutin speech made him seem out of touch with the audience.
- too highfalutin
- highfalutin fancy
- highfalutin words
We're communicating truth sounding very highfalutin, but the proof is important.
- We're communicating truth sounding very highfalutin, but the proof is important.
- So all of my highfalutin friends are just the Taliban.
- And so we thought that the good is not some inscrutable, highfalutin, abstract moral ideal.
- And I try to do it through storytelling, not through highfalutin preaching where that craziness works.
- There's actually products, I know of at least one product out there that like you can, you can get like a highfalutin machine that will that will turn.
- She was always the woman who went in the highfalutin job that they would poke fun at because most of their movies threw darts at the privilege class.
Examples
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The doctors had a lot of highfalutin explanations.
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You do not entertain highfalutin notions of decadence.
Fiction book (1993) -
So again, that name is kind of kind of highfalutin, but here you have it.
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To be honest with you, it just seems so highfalutin for me.
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OK, enough of this highfalutin, let's get into it.
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I mean, I don't want to get too highfalutin about this.
Blog text (3) -
You afraid I'm gonna embarrass you in front of your highfalutin college friends, huh?
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The music is what matters, and Prince Rama, with this highfalutin silliness, has delivered big.
Blog text (3) -
It nicely distinguishes them from the highfalutin grammar freaks.
Blog text (28) -
It was his Nobel Prize speech, but it's not a highfalutin, highbrow, technical Greek letter kind of economics treatise.
Synonyms
Trying to seem more important or clever than you really are
Acting more important and formal than necessary
Too big and showy in a way that tries to seem more important than it is
Acting as if you are better than other people
Showing elegant, expensive style that makes someone seem richer or more important
Being too proud and acting as if you are better than other people
Very fancy in a way that tries to impress people
Seeming important or impressive but lacking real meaning and honesty
Very fancy in a way that shows you think you are better than others
Using words or ideas that sound grand and showy but feel unrealistic
Using long, fancy words to sound important
Showing the attitude of a rich person who thinks they are better than others
Showing off and acting more important than others
To use very big, showy words to sound important
Acting very formal and proud to seem better than others
Acting very fancy to show you are better than others
Someone who shows educated, serious tastes in art or books and seems a bit proud
Antonyms
How Pretentious
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Highfalutin looks like high + falutin, and a helpful way to remember it is to think of falutin as sounding like 'flauntin'', which means 'showing off'. So highfalutin describes people or language that act 'too important' or 'pretending to be better than others'.