highbrow
/hˈaɪbɹˌaʊ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.42 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "highbrow entertainment"
- "“He's so darn afraid you'll be offended if he smokes. You scare him. Every time he speaks of the weather you jump him because he ain't talking about poetry or Gertie—Goethe?—or some other highbrow junk. You've got him so leery he scarcely dares to come here.”"
- "They tend to regard the socialist intellectuals as nothing more than a pernicious bunch of highbrow radicals without appreciating their influence […]"
Etymology
A compound of the words high + brow, first recorded usage in 1875. Referring to the (by that time discredited) science of phrenology, which suggested that a person of intelligence and sophistication would possess a higher brow-line than someone of lesser intelligence and sophistication.