ˈhigh-hat, v. Chiefly U.S.
[f. prec.]
intr. To wear a high hat; to assume a superior attitude. trans. To treat condescendingly. So high-hatted a.
| 1924 H. C. Witwer in Cosmopolitan Apr. 68/1 ‘Why high hat me?’ he complains. ‘I'm harmless and I may be able to do you a lot of good.’ 1924 H. Crane Let. 24 Jan. (1965) 171 It's become fashionable for the high-hatted uptowners now to buy Matisse's paintings. 1925 S. Lewis Martin Arrowsmith xxxix. 455 If I blew in and old Mart high-hatted me, I'd just about come nigh unto letting him hear the straight truth. 1927 Sat. Even. Post 24 Dec. 22/3 What made me so sore..was her thinkin' she could high-hat me. 1929 C. E. Merriam Chicago 292 Dever's dignity was mistaken by some for ‘high-hatting’. 1941 N. Coward Australia Visited iii. 15 The true representative American..is unpretentious... He dislikes being ‘ritz'd’ or ‘high-hatted’. 1941 Belloc Silence of Sea xxxi. 193 The Americans..say of a proud man that ‘he wears a high hat’... ‘If you talk like that,’ he was told, ‘they will think you are high-hatting them.’ 1965 New Statesman 7 May 730/2 Her ineffective efforts to make her sons ‘high-hat the neighbours’ and join the élite. |