Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cocktail served in a tall glass and consisting of liquor, such as whiskey, mixed with water or a carbonated beverage.
- noun A railroad signal indicating full speed ahead.
- noun A high-speed train.
- intransitive verb To move ahead at full speed.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A method of settling who shall pay for something, in which the numbered balls that are used in the game of pin-pool are thrown out from a receptacle, the highest ball winning and the lowest paying.
- noun A ‘long drink,’ consisting of a modicum of whisky diluted with club soda or mineral water, and served with cracked ice in a tall glass.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An alcoholic beverage having a liquor such as whiskey mixed with water or a carbonated beverage, and usually served with ice in a tall glass.
- noun (Railroads) A railroad track signal permitting the engineer to proceed at full speed.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
cocktail made fromspirit plussoda water etc. - noun rail transport An
all clear orfull speed ahead signal. - verb To make an
estimate which tends towardexaggeration . - verb slang To move
quickly ; tohightail .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a mixed drink made of alcoholic liquor mixed with water or a carbonated beverage and served in a tall glass
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Unless you're climbing so-called highball problems you'll climb unroped and close enought to the ground to be safe to jump off from.
unknown title 2009
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Did Darwyn Cooke come up with the nickname "highball" for Hal Jordan, or was it someone else?
Judging (DC’s May) Books By Their Covers | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources 2008
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Similarly, in another study, Philadelphia bartenders were found to pour less liquor into "highball" glasses than they did into tumblers.
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The telegraph operator at Half Way (merely a name for a station, for there was not a habitation in sight) thrust his long upper-length out of the telegraph office window one afternoon and waved a "highball" to the waiting electric locomotive on the sidetrack.
Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive, or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails Victor [pseud.] Appleton
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Once barely sipping at wines, cocktails, brandy-and-soda, she now took to the latter, or, rather, to a new whisky-and-soda combination known as "highball" with a kind of vehemence which had little to do with a taste for the thing itself.
The Titan Theodore Dreiser 1908
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A "highball" in each hand was frequently mentioned in the 1960s.
The Big Apple 2009
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"highball" as he pondered over some means of circumventing the social treason of his dethroned "friend."
The Midnight Passenger : a novel Richard Savage 1874
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"highball" (only one, the ladies would say to my dad when he reached under the sink where he kept his one bottle of whisky).
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Yes, sir, "and the conductor, giving the watching engineer of his train the" highball, "caught the hand-rail of the car and swung himself aboard as the train started.
Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive, or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails Victor [pseud.] Appleton
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It is served in a salt-rimmed highball glass with 3-5 ice cubes: 1.5 oz tequila, 1/2 ounce lime juice (or juice of 1/2 a small Mexican lime), 2 ounces sangrita and filled with grapefruit soda (Fresca or Squirt, sometimes omitted).
Sangrita and sangria 2009
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