tall
adjective
- “he engages in so much tall talk, one never really realizes what he is saying”
Origin
From Middle English tall, talle, tal (“seemly, becoming, handsome, good-looking, excellent, good, valiant, lively in speech, bold, great, large, big”), from Old English *tæl, ġetæl (“swift, ready, having mastery of”), from Proto-Germanic *talaz (“submissive, pliable, obedient”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol-, *del- (“to aim, calculate, adjust, reckon”). Cognate with Scots tal (“high, lofty, tall”), Old Frisian tel (“swift”), Old Saxon gital (“quick”), Old High German gizal (“active, agile”), Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍄𐌰𐌻𐍃 (untals, “indocile, disobedient”). The Oxford English Dictionary notes: "The sense development [of tall] is remarkable, but is paralleled more or less by that of other adjectives expressing estimation, such as buxom, canny, clean, clever, cunning, deft, elegant, handsome, pretty, proper; German klein, as compared with English clean, presents the antithesis to modern tall as compared to tall in early Middle English. It has been conjectured that in the sense 'high of stature' it is a different word, adopted from the Welsh tal in some sense; but the latter is, according to Professor Rhŷs, merely a 16th-century borrowing of the English word (in Owen Pughe's Dictionary erroneously ...
Phrases
- big and tall
- cut down the tall poppy
- feel eight feet tall
- feel nine feet tall
- feel ten feet tall
- feel twelve feet tall
- keep it tall
- mackerel sky and mare's-tails make tall ships carry low sails
Related words
Word family
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.