Dictionaries › English

height

Pronunciation: /haɪt/

The English word “height” has 10 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The distance from the base to the top of something.
  2. The vertical distance from the ground to the highest part of a standing person or animal (withers in the case of a horse).
  3. The minimum distance from a vertex of a triangle to (the extension of) the edge opposite, namely along a line perpendicular to the edge.
  4. The amplitude of a sinusoid.
  5. The distance of something above the ground or some other chosen level.
  6. A high point.
  7. The highest point or maximum degree.
  8. A mountain, especially a very high one.
  9. An area of land at the top of a cliff.
  10. A quality of vowels, indicating the vertical position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth; in practice, the first formant, associated with the height of the tongue.

Etymology

From Middle English heighte, heiȝþe, from Old English hēahþu, hēhþo, hīehþu (“height”), Proto-West Germanic *hauhiþu, from Proto-Germanic *hauhiþō (compare *hauhaz). Equivalent to high + -t (abstract nominal suffix). The regular pronunciation is now obsolete /heɪt/ (as with other words in -eight); the modern form developed early on, at first as a variant, by analogy with the underlying adjective.…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “height” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.