different between head vs high

English

Alternative forms

• heed (obsolete), hed (obsolete)
• 'ead (UK, eye dialect)

Pronunciation

• enPR: h?d, IPA^(key): /h?d/
• Rhymes: -?d

Etymology 1

From Middle English hed, heed, heved, heaved, from Old English h?afod (“head; top; source, origin; chief, leader; capital”), from Proto-Germanic *haubud? (“head”), from Proto-Indo-European *káput-.

Noun

head (countable and uncountable, plural heads or head)

1. (countable) The part of the body of an animal or human which contains the brain, mouth, and main sense organs.
   1. (people) To do with heads.
      1. Mental or emotional aptitude or skill.

      2. (figuratively, metonymically) Mind; one's own thoughts.
      3. A headache; especially one resulting from intoxication.
      4. A headdress; a covering for the head.

      5. (figuratively, metonymically) An individual person.
   2. (animals) To do with heads.
      1. (plural head, measure word for livestock and game) A single animal.

      2. The population of game.

      3. The antlers of a deer.
2. (countable) The topmost, foremost, or leading part.
   1. The end of a table.
      1. The end of a rectangular table furthest from the entrance; traditionally considered a seat of honor.

      2. (billiards) The end of a pool table opposite the end where the balls have been racked.
   2. (countable) The principal operative part of a machine or tool.
      1. The end of a hammer, axe, golf club, or similar implement used for striking other objects.
      2. The end of a nail, screw, bolt, or similar fastener which is opposite the point; usually blunt and relatively wide.

      3. The sharp end of an arrow, spear, or pointer.

      4. (lacrosse) The top part of a lacrosse stick that holds the ball.
      5. (music) A drum head, the membrane which is hit to produce sound.

      6. A machine element which reads or writes electromagnetic signals to or from a storage medium.

      7. (computing) The part of a disk drive responsible for reading and writing data.
      8. (automotive) The cylinder head, a platform above the cylinders in an internal combustion engine, containing the valves and spark plugs.
   3. (uncountable, countable) The foam that forms on top of beer or other carbonated beverages.

      He never learned how to pour a glass of beer so it didn't have too much head.

   4. (engineering) The end cap of a cylindrically-shaped pressure vessel.
   5. (Britain, geology) Deposits near the top of a geological succession.
   6. (journalism) Short for headline.
      • 1968, Earl English, ?Clarence Hach, Scholastic Journalism (page 166)

        The content of a headline over a news story should be taken from the lead of the story. […] The head should give the same impression as the body of the story.

   7. (medicine) The end of an abscess where pus collects.
   8. (music) The headstock of a guitar.
   9. (nautical) A leading component.
      1. The top edge of a sail.
      2. The bow of a vessel.
   10. (Britain) A headland.
3. (social, countable, metonymically) A leader or expert.
   1. The place of honour, or of command; the most important or foremost position; the front.
   2. (metonymically) Leader; chief; mastermind.
   3. (metonymically) A headmaster or headmistress.
      • 1992 June 24, Edwina Currie, Diary:

        At 4pm, the phone went. It was The Sun: 'We hear your daughter's been expelled for cheating at her school exams...'
        
        She'd made a remark to a friend at the end of the German exam and had been pulled up for talking.
        
        As they left the exam room, she muttered that the teacher was a 'twat'. He heard and flipped—a pretty stupid thing to do, knowing the kids were tired and tense after exams. Instead of dropping it, the teacher complained to the Head and Deb was carpeted.

   4. (music, slang, figuratively, metonymically) A person with an extensive knowledge of hip hop.

4. A significant or important part.
   1. A beginning or end, a protuberance.
      1. The source of a river; the end of a lake where a river flows into it.

      2. A clump of seeds, leaves or flowers; a capitulum.
         1. An ear of wheat, barley, or other small cereal.
         2. The leafy top part of a tree.
      3. (anatomy) The rounded part of a bone fitting into a depression in another bone to form a ball-and-socket joint.
      4. (nautical) The toilet of a ship.

      5. (in the plural) Tiles laid at the eaves of a house.
         • 1875, Edward H. Knight, Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary, vol. II, page 1086

           Heads. (Roofing.) Tiles which are laid at the eaves of a house

   2. A component.
      1. (jazz) The principal melody or theme of a piece.
      2. (linguistics) A morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member.
5. Headway; progress.

6. Topic; subject.

7. (only in the singular) Denouement; crisis.
   • 1712 October 18, anonymous letter in The Spectator, edited by Joseph Addison, no. 513, collected in The Works of the Late Right Honorable Joseph Addison, Esq, Birmingham: John Baskerville, published 1761, volume IV, page 10:

     THE indi?po?ition which has long hung upon me, is at la?t grown to ?uch an head, that it mu?t quickly make an end of me, or of it?elf.

8. (fluid dynamics) Pressure and energy.
   1. (uncountable, countable) A buildup of fluid pressure, often quantified as pressure head.

      How much head do you have at the Glens Falls feeder dam?

   2. The difference in elevation between two points in a column of fluid, and the resulting pressure of the fluid at the lower point.
   3. More generally, energy in a mass of fluid divided by its weight.
9. (slang, uncountable) Fellatio or cunnilingus; oral sex.

10. (slang) The glans penis.
11. (slang, countable) A heavy or habitual user of illicit drugs.
    • 1936, Lee Duncan, Over The Wall, Dutton

      Then I saw the more advanced narcotic addicts, who shot unbelievable doses of powerful heroin in the main line – the vein of their arms; the hysien users; chloroform sniffers, who belonged to the riff-raff element of the dope chippeys, who mingled freely with others of their kind; canned heat stiffs, paragoric hounds, laudanum fiends, and last but not least, the veronal heads.

    • 2005, Martin Torgoff, Can't Find My Way Home, Simon & Schuster, page 177,

      The hutch now looks like a “Turkish bath,” and the heads have their arms around one another, passing the pipe and snapping their fingers as they sing Smokey Robinson's “Tracks of My Tears” into the night.

12. (obsolete) Power; armed force.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:head.

Gallery

Synonyms

• (part of the body): caput (anatomy); pate, noggin (slang), loaf (slang), nut (slang), noodle (slang), bonce (British slang)
• (mental aptitude or talent): mind
• (mental or emotional control): composure, poise
• (topmost part of anything): top
• (leader): boss, chief, leader
• (headmaster, headmistress): headmaster m, headmistress f, principal (US)
• (toilet of a ship): See Thesaurus:toilet and Thesaurus:bathroom
• (top of a sail):
• (foam on carbonated beverages):
• (fellatio): blowjob, blow job, fellatio, oral sex
• (end of tool used for striking):
• (blunt end of fastener):
• See also Thesaurus:head

Antonyms

• (topmost part of anything): base, bottom, underside, foot, tail
• (leader): subordinate, underling
• (blunt end of fastener): point, sharp end, tip

Usage notes

• To give something its head is to allow it to run freely. This is used for horses, and, sometimes, figuratively for vehicles.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (heddo)
• Sranan Tongo: ede

Translations

See head/translations § Noun.

Adjective

head (not comparable)

1. Of, relating to, or intended for the head.

Translations

Verb

head (third-person singular simple present heads, present participle heading, simple past and past participle headed)

2. (transitive) To be in command of. (See also head up.)

3. (transitive) To come at the beginning of; to commence.

   A group of clowns headed the procession.

   The most important items headed the list.

4. (transitive) To strike with the head; as in soccer, to head the ball
5. (intransitive) To move in a specified direction.

6. (fishing) To remove the head from a fish.

7. (intransitive) To originate; to spring; to have its course, as a river.
   • 1775, James Adair, The History of the American Indians, page 223

     a broad purling river, that heads in the great blue ridge of mountains,
8. (intransitive) To form a head.
9. (transitive) To form a head to; to fit or furnish with a head.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

10. (transitive) To cut off the top of; to lop off.

11. (transitive, obsolete) To behead; to decapitate.
    • 1822, Allan Cunningham, "Ezra Peden", in Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry, v. 1, p. 37.

      I tell thee, man of God, the uncharitableness of the sect to which thou pertainest has thronged the land of punishment as much as those who headed, and hanged, and stabbed, and shot, and tortured.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

12. To go in front of.

13. To get in the front of, so as to hinder or stop; to oppose.

14. (by extension) To check or restrain.
15. To set on the head.

Derived terms

Translations

Related terms

• ahead
• knucklehead
• railhead
• smackhead

Etymology 2

From Middle English hed, heved, heaved, hæfedd, from Old English h?afod- (“principal, main, primary”), from Proto-Germanic *haubuda-, *haubida-, from Proto-Indo-European *kauput-, *káput- (“head”). Compare Saterland Frisian hööft-, West Frisian haad-, Dutch hoofd-, German Low German höövd-, German haupt-.

Adjective

head (not comparable)

1. Foremost in rank or importance.

2. Placed at the top or the front.
3. Coming from in front.

Synonyms

• (foremost in rank or importance): chief, principal
• (placed at the top or the front): first, top

Antonyms

• (coming from in front): tail

Translations

Anagrams

• DHEA, ahed, hade

Estonian

Adjective

head

1. inflection of hea:
   1. partitive singular
   2. plural

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: h?, IPA^(key): /ha?/, [ha??]
• (US) IPA^(key): /ha?/, [ha??]
• Rhymes: -a?
• Homophones: hi, Hi, hie

Etymology 1

From Middle English high, heigh, heih, from Old English h?ah (“high, tall, lofty, high-class, exalted, sublime, illustrious, important, proud, haughty, deep, right”), from Proto-West Germanic *hauh (“high”), from Proto-Germanic *hauhaz (“high”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewk- (“to bend, curve, arch, vault”), a suffixed form of *kew-.

Cognate with Scots heich (“high”), Saterland Frisian hooch (“high”), West Frisian heech (“high”), Dutch hoog (“high”), Low German hoog (“high”), German hoch (“high”), Swedish hög (“high”), Norwegian høy (“high”), Icelandic hár (“high”), Lithuanian kaukas (“bump, boil, sore”), Russian ????? (kú?a, “pile, heap, stack, lump”).

Alternative forms

• hi (informal)

Adjective

high (comparative higher, superlative highest)

1. Elevated, extending above a base or average level:
   1. Very elevated; extending or being far above a base; tall; lofty.
   2. Relatively elevated; rising or raised above the average or normal level from which elevation is measured.
      • 1919, Martha Van Rensselaer, Flora Rose, Helen Canon, A Manual of Home-Making, page 376:

        A nightgown with a high neck and long sleeves may have the fullness set into a yoke.

   3. (baseball, of a ball) Above the batter's shoulders.

      the pitch (or: the ball) was high

   4. Pertaining to (or, especially of a language: spoken in) in an area which is at a greater elevation, for example more mountainous, than other regions.
2. Having a specified elevation or height; tall.

   three feet high   three Mount Everests high
3. Elevated in status, esteem, or prestige, or in importance or development; exalted in rank, station, or character.

   The oldest of the elves' royal family still conversed in High Elvish.

   • 1855-57, Charles Dickens Little Dorrit

     The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places.

   1. Most exalted; foremost.

      the high priest, the high officials of the court, the high altar

   2. Of great importance and consequence: grave (if negative) or solemn (if positive).

      high crimes, the high festival of the sun

   3. Consummate; advanced (e.g. in development) to the utmost extent or culmination, or possessing a quality in its supreme degree, at its zenith.

      high (i.e. intense) heat; high (i.e. full or quite) noon; high (i.e. rich or spicy) seasoning; high (i.e. complete) pleasure; high (i.e. deep or vivid) colour; high (i.e. extensive, thorough) scholarship; high tide; high [tourism] season; the High Middle Ages

      • High time it is this war now ended were.

      • 1709-1710, Thomas Baker, Reflections on Learning

        High sauces and rich spices are fetch'd from the Indies.

   4. Advanced in complexity (and hence potentially abstract and/or difficult to comprehend).
      • 1802, William Wordsworth, England 1802

        Plain living and high thinking are no more.

4. (in several set phrases) Remote in distance or time.

   high latitude, high antiquity

   • 2007, Sheila Finch, Shaper's Legacy ?ISBN, page 122

     Not a one of them was old enough to know what the high past of Liani separatism had really been like.

5. (in several set phrases) Very traditionalist and conservative, especially in favoring older ways of doing things; see e.g. high church, High Tory.
   • 1858, Joseph Howe, Speeches and Public Letters, page 346:

     The letter of a "Pioneer" was sent to the Chronicle office by a very respectable man, of a high conservative family, but whose interests have been injuriously affected by the constant fluctuations in the commercial policy of England.

   • 1861 (printed 2003), Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Regnery Publishing (?ISBN)

     His family was ardently royalist, and might be compared to a high Tory family on this side the water; with some change of conditions, their prejudices and disposition of the mind were the same.

   • 2005, Jesse D. Geller, John C. Norcross, David E. Orlinsky, The Psychotherapist's Own Psychotherapy, Oxford University Press (?ISBN), page 69:

     My father was the youngest son of a High-Church and high Tory family, the politically leftwing and religiously Nonconformist rebel; and antiimperialist who nearly lost his position in the City by refusing to sign his firm's pro–Boer War petition.

6. Elevated in mood; marked by great merriment, excitement, etc.

   in high spirits

   • 1970, Grateful Dead, High Time, on the album Workingman's Dead

     I was having a high time, living the good life.

7. (of a lifestyle) Luxurious; rich.

   high living, the high life

   • 2010, Rose Maria McCarthy Anding. High Heels, Honey Lips, & White Powder

     I was living the high lifestyle in famous sex clubs, relaxing on luxurious sofas, in the saunas and whirlpools, enjoying moments of excitement with my male and female companions while sipping champagne from crystal glasses.

8. Lofty, often to the point of arrogant, haughty, boastful, proud.

   a high tone

   • An high look and a proud heart […] is sin.

   • His forces, after all the high discourses, amounted really but to eighteen hundred foot.

9. (with "on" or "about") Keen, enthused.
   • 2010, Lena, quoted by S. Rosenbloom, The Multiracial Urban High School: Fearing Peers and Trusting Friends (?ISBN), chapter four:

     I'm not that high about the relationship.

10. (of a body of water) With tall waves.
11. Large, great (in amount or quantity, value, force, energy, etc).

    • Can heavenly minds such high resentment show?
    1. Having a large or comparatively larger concentration of (a substance, which is often but not always linked by "in" when predicative).

    • 1907, The American Exporter, volume 60, page 101:

      Anyone can determine for himself whether certain wire is high carbon or not. Heat a piece of the wire red hot and while red plunge into water till cold.

12. (acoustics) Acute or shrill in pitch, due to being of greater frequency, i.e. produced by more rapid vibrations (wave oscillations).

13. (phonetics) Made with some part of the tongue positioned high in the mouth, relatively close to the palate.
14. (card games) Greater in value than other cards, denominations, suits, etc.
    1. (poker) Having the highest rank in a straight, flush or straight flush.

       I have KT742 of the same suit. In other words, a K-high flush.

       9-high straight = 98765 unsuited

       Royal Flush = AKQJT suited = A-high straight flush

    2. (of a card or hand) Winning; able to take a trick, win a round, etc.

       North's hand was high. East was in trouble.

       • 1894, Harper's Magazine, volume 88, page 910:

         Cutler pushed forward the two necessary white chips. No one's hand was high, and Loomis made a slight winning.

15. (of meat, especially venison) Strong-scented; slightly tainted/spoiled; beginning to decompose.

    Epicures do not cook game before it is high.
16. (informal) Intoxicated; under the influence of a mood-altering drug, formerly usually alcohol, but now (from the mid-20th century) usually not alcohol but rather marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc.
17. (nautical, of a sailing ship) Near, in its direction of travel, to the (direction of the) wind.

Synonyms

• haute, hawt
• (elevated): See Thesaurus:tall
• (intoxicated): See Thesaurus:stoned or Thesaurus:drunk

Antonyms

• low

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Pages starting with “high”.

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: hei

Translations

See also

• mighty

Adverb

high (comparative higher, superlative highest)

1. In or to an elevated position.

   How high above land did you fly?

2. In or at a great value.

   Costs have grown higher this year again.

3. At a pitch of great frequency.

   I certainly can't sing that high.

Usage notes

• The adverb high and the adverb highly should not be confused.

  He hung the picture high on the wall.

  As a politician, he isn't esteemed too highly.

Translations

References

• Yuri Dolgopolov, A Dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms (2016, ?ISBN): "high on something"

Noun

high (plural highs)

1. A high point or position, literally (as, an elevated place; a superior region; a height; the sky; heaven).or figuratively (as, a point of success or achievement; a time when things are at their best, greatest, most numerous, maximum, etc).

   It was one of the highs of his career.

   Inflation reached a ten-year high.

   • 2019, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     South Korea has reached a new high in a kind of air pollution measured in fine dust.

   1. The maximum atmospheric temperature recorded at a particular location, especially during one 24-hour period.

      Today's high was 32 °C.

2. A period of euphoria, from excitement or from an intake of drugs.
   • 2013, Daniel Taylor, Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic climbs highest to sink Benfica (in The Guardian, 15 May 2013)[3]

     They will have to reflect on a seventh successive defeat in a European final while Chelsea try to make sense of an eccentric season rife with controversy and bad feeling but once again one finishing on an exhilarating high.

3. A drug that gives such a high.
4. (meteorology, informal) A large area of elevated atmospheric pressure; an anticyclone.

   A large high is centred on the Azores.

5. (card games) The highest card dealt or drawn.

Translations

See also

• crash

Verb

high (third-person singular simple present highs, present participle highing, simple past and past participle highed)

1. (obsolete) To rise.

   The sun higheth.

Etymology 2

From Middle English hi?e, hu?e, hui?e, huie, hige, from Old English hy?e (“thought, mind, heart, disposition, intention, courage, pride”), from Proto-West Germanic *hugi, from Proto-Germanic *hugiz (“mind, sense”), of unknown origin. Cognate with North Frisian huwggje (“mind, sense”), Middle Low German höge, hoge (“thought, meaning, mood, happiness”), Middle High German hüge, huge, hoge (“mind, spirit, memory”), Danish hu (“mind”), Swedish håg (“mind, inclination”), Icelandic hugur (“mind”). Related to Hugh.

Noun

high (plural highs)

1. (obsolete)
2. Thought; intention; determination; purpose.

Etymology 3

See hie.

Verb

high (third-person singular simple present highs, present participle highing, simple past and past participle highed)

2. To hie; to hasten.

Anagrams

• GHIH