How to Use highfalutin in a Sentence

highfalutin

adjective
  • In a sense, this highfalutin hypocrisy and lack of principle is the point of Bagehot.
    John Lanchester, The New Yorker, 29 July 2019
  • And even the most highfalutin fly rodder won’t argue against a hot fried bluegill with a side of onions and potatoes.
    T. Edward Nickens, Field & Stream, 12 Mar. 2020
  • Anything else is just highfalutin’, and granny would not approve.
    Amber Sutton, al, 29 June 2022
  • If that’s not true, BYU’s chances for anything highfalutin this season are dead, mostly dead.
    Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 18 Sep. 2022
  • But don’t expect a bunch of highfalutin paintings of the Art Museum steps, or simple shots of Center City now versus in the 1970s.
    Nick Vadala, Philly.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • Until the massive mess-up by the Democrats on Caucus Night, the caucuses had performed as advertised: The highfalutin forced to meet and greet the hoi polloi.
    Charlie Szold, National Review, 11 Feb. 2020
  • Despite the highfalutin framing, the only part of X described above that is not already in some way a part of Twitter, is a means of making payments.
    Brian Merchant, Los Angeles Times, 26 July 2023
  • Don’t expect the pair to celebrate either milestone with a highfalutin meal, though.
    Chris Morris, Fortune, 30 Aug. 2023
  • Her voice was as engaging and charming as her ex-husband’s was abstruse and highfalutin.
    Penelope Green, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2023
  • His affected, highfalutin accent is from his father; the fluid agony in his limbs is from his mother.
    Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 7 Jan. 2022
  • Their brash energy counts for a lot, and in horror movies, especially, too much highfalutin artiness can just end up being a chill-killer.
    Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 7 June 2018
  • Remember that scene where Batman cut a bullet out of a wall and used some highfalutin computer program to recreate the fingerprint on it?
    Jason Parham, WIRED, 21 June 2018
  • Cage asks, repeating the absurd gesture Paul makes of miming drinking wine at a highfalutin dinner.
    Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 2 Jan. 2024
  • Head to Bistro Dukes'—an upscale, but not highfalutin affair—for a refined take on classic Belgian fare, like crispy pheasant croquettes, served in a tart cranberry gel.
    Condé Nast Traveler, 20 Oct. 2017
  • Populists hated highfalutin newspapers as much as Mr Trump claims to today.
    The Economist, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Jokes are made amid explanations of courses; the little bites are called snacks, rather than highfalutin amuse-bouche and mignardise; and the sound of boisterous weekend diners bleeds into EsterEv's space.
    Carol Deptolla, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 Aug. 2017
  • In recent years, Alabama has embraced this highfalutin brand of football.
    Rainer Sabin, AL.com, 29 Aug. 2017
  • All of these really highfalutin figures look back on their time as fast-food employees as kind of character-building weigh stations on their way to success.
    Rachel Sugar, Vox, 26 June 2019
  • The fashionableness of this highfalutin form of fascism might seem, at first, wildly alien from American issues or problems.
    Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 30 Mar. 2017
  • The problem is that Ms. Jamison can’t or won’t cut the highfalutin language, the unrelentingly earnest, good-student voice and academic distance.
    Kate Christensen, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Techno doesn’t need to be cosigned by highfalutin institutions to validate its importance, but Versus is the kind of work that demands a nod even from folks who might not have deigned to acknowledge the genre before.
    Leor Galil, Chicago Reader, 31 Aug. 2017
  • Philip thought Woody Allen was a phony pseudo-intellectual who had never finished a book in his life and made all these highfalutin allusions to Strindberg and whatnot.
    Jordan Reife, Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2021
  • In less highfalutin language, increasing taxes on an activity leads to less of it; cutting taxes on an activity leads to more of it.
    Star Tribune, 30 Jan. 2021
  • The original had great opening rounds in 2015 before a bacon-jalapeño-pimento cheese burger — about as fancy as Kincaid’s gets — didn’t deliver enough heat or cheese, and the beloved burger joint fell to the more highfalutin Thurber Mingus.
    Robert Philpot, star-telegram, 7 Sep. 2017
  • So that was probably my main contribution, was to bring everything to a screeching halt with my ridiculous, highfalutin ideas about consciousness.
    Geek's Guide To The Galaxy, WIRED, 30 Sep. 2017
  • But after some highfalutin remarks, Crowe makes a hard turn to a profane, confrontational rant pitching his movie about a homicidal maniac.
    Ryan Faughnder, chicagotribune.com, 22 Aug. 2020
  • American politicians, the pusillanimous and the mountebanks and even their opposites, used to be as highfalutin as Foghorn Leghorn with their gibes, which made politics fun for fans of Shakespeare, the Bible or obscure history.
    oregonlive, 31 Mar. 2020
  • Think of the highfalutin writer like a fisherman: instead of baiting a hook and casting it out for consumption like his competition, Pizzolatto skims the thematic pools with a big frickin' net.
    Matt Patches, Esquire, 29 June 2015
  • The references—to Hesiod’s advice on choosing a mate, Thomas Edison’s theory of memory, Lebanese proverbs, early space travel—serve to heighten the text without seeming highfalutin.
    Emily Bobrow, WSJ, 7 Feb. 2020
  • Despite my parents' careers as physicians,our household was not highfalutin and full of pictures of foxhunts, or expensive wines-actually my parents prefer box wines.
    Rich Santos, Marie Claire, 15 Dec. 2010

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'highfalutin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: