height

Noun

1. The distance from the base to the top of something.
   • Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length [title of poem] - 1942, Robert Frost, “Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length”, in A Witness Tree, New York: Henry Hold and Company, published...
   • He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […], the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their...

   Synonyms: stature

   1. The vertical distance from the ground to the highest part of a standing person or animal (withers in the case of a horse).

      • — What's your height? — 180 centimetres.

      Synonyms: stature

   2. (geometry) The minimum distance from a vertex of a triangle to (the extension of) the edge opposite, namely along a line perpendicular to the edge.

      • The area of a triangle is "a half base times height".

      Synonyms: stature altitude

   3. (mathematics) The amplitude of a sinusoid.

      Synonyms: stature

2. The distance of something above the ground or some other chosen level.
   • We flew at a height of 15 000 meters.
   • I'm afraid of heights.

   Synonyms: altitude

   Antonyms: depth

3. A high point.
   • At length they arrived at the open road, skirted by a wide heath, bounded by the rising heights of the undulating country. - 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter V, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III,...
   • The Guardian of the Flooded Village has grown for 350 years on a rocky height near the village of Chudobin, said locally to play host to a devil that sat under it at night, playing the violin and warding off intruders –...

   1. (figurative) The highest point or maximum degree.

      • She's at the height of her career.
      • […]They clip vs drunkards, and with Swiniſh phraſe / Soyle our addition, and indeede it takes / From our atchieuements, though perform’d at height / The pith and marrow of our attribute[…] - c. 1599–1602 (date written),...
      • Leo, then at the height of his pontificate, despatched a letter to Cerularius demanding that the Patriarch should recognize the supremacy of the popes, and branding any church that refused such recognition as “an...

      Synonyms: acme apex zenith apogee apotheosis ascendance capstone climax coronation crown culmination extreme fastigium high note high point high tide high-water mark midday Mount Everest outblossom paroxysm perihelion pinnacle summa

   2. A mountain, especially a very high one.

   3. (Sussex) An area of land at the top of a cliff.

4. 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.

   Coordinate Terms: backness roundedness length nasalization reduction