adjective

• (especially of language or ideas) extravagant and grand-sounding.

  ‘he had other more high-flown artistic notions in mind’

  More example sentences

  • ‘his novels seem high-flown and absurd’
  • ‘The language they used was high-flown - some would say overblown.’
  • ‘It is tempting under the current circumstances to rush down from our high ground and have a right old go at the BBC - perhaps using rather high-flown and intemperate language.’
  • ‘Viewed in this light, his high-flown rhetoric about the timeless values of freedom and democracy can seem an abstraction fit only for university debating halls.’
  • ‘Whatever high-flown rhetoric comes from the president next week, the reality is clear-cut.’
  • ‘Setting aside the high-flown rhetoric of the age, the issues raised are with us still.’
  • ‘Plans for a merger between Amicus and the TGWU, and possibly the GMB trade unions were announced recently with some high-flown oratory from Tony Woodley, the TGWU general secretary.’
  • ‘It contains 823 pages of learned, high-flown, flowery reflections on the glorious if doomed role of the poet in a nasty world, with a high incidence of exclamation marks.’
  • ‘Unlike Kurtz, he sees civilization in practical terms rather than through high-flown rhetoric.’
  • ‘However, journalism did not change overnight and it still indulged in the Soviet practice of wordiness and high-flown rhetoric.’
  • ‘And these values are made tangible through people, for people are the heart of a successful institution - not buildings, not high-flown mission statements or even traditions.’
  • ‘The cultural supplements of Germany's newspapers, always fond of high-flown debates, will have their work cut out for them this summer.’
  • ‘His biography is eminently sensible on a subject about which much high-flown transcendental nonsense has been written.’
  • ‘Anyone who has read the Bronte Sisters knows the kind of high-flown passion the Victorians held dear.’
  • ‘His pungent rejoinders made short work of the Government's high-flown theories.’
  • ‘In contrast to many postmodernists, who engage in easy forms of parody when addressing the high-flown art of the past, Schütte has actually had the courage to work from inside the tradition - and risk the comparisons.’
  • ‘She knew that people didn't respond to films for either high-flown aesthetic reasons or ‘moral’ ones, and she waged endless war on critics who claimed they did.’
  • ‘The only Shakespeare play written entirely in verse, it contrasts the high-flown ideals of Richard with the low cunning of Henry Bolingbroke, the man who overthrows him and later has him murdered.’
  • ‘In terms of British theatrical history it represents the last great fling of the high-flown late Victorian tradition most readily associated with Sir Henry Irving.’
  • ‘Working people should not allow themselves to be deceived by the high-flown speeches, glossy brochures and fireworks displays.’
  • ‘It was not the last time the high-flown menu prose promised one thing while the actual dish delivered another.’

  Synonyms

  grand-sounding, high-sounding, extravagant, exaggerated, elaborate, flowery, florid, ornate, overblown, overdone, overripe, overwrought, grandiloquent, magniloquent, grandiose, lofty, rhetorical, oratorical, verbose, inflated, affected, pretentious, turgid, bombastic, declamatory

  View synonyms