heighth

English edit

Etymology edit

From Old English hēahþu, hēhþu, hīehþu, equivalent to high +‎ -th. Cognate with Dutch hoogte (“height”).

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /haɪθ/, /haɪtθ/
Rhymes: -aɪθ, -aɪtθ

Noun edit

heighth (plural heighths)

(obsolete outside US dialects, now proscribed) Alternative form of height
- 1636, Peter Ramus, translated by Peter Bedwell, The Way To Geometry: [Being Necessary and Usefull for Astronomers, Enginees, Geographers,. Architects, Land-meaters, Carpenters, Sea-men & Etc.]‎^[1], pages 277–278:
  And from hence also shall be the geodesy of the Icosaedrum. For the finding out of the heighth of the pyramis, there is the semidiagony of the side of the decangle and the halfe ray of the circle: But the side of the decangle is a right line subtending the halfe periphery of the side of the quinquangle, or else the greater segment of the ray proportionally cut.
- 1690, Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade‎^[2]:
  In the Infancy of the World, Governments began with little Families and Colonies of Men; so that, when ever any Government arrived to greater Heighth than the rest, either by the great Wisdom or Courage of the Government, they afterwards grew a pace...
- 1700, Colley Cibber, Richard III‎^[3]:
  'Why then to me this restless World's but Hell,
  Till this mishapen trunks aspiring head
  'Be circled in a glorious Diadem --
  But then 'tis fixt on such an heighth, O!...
- 1809, James Grey Jackson, An Account of the Empire of Marocco, London, page 169:
  The heighth of the celestial happiness is to see God (...).
- 1826, James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans‎^[4]:
  " […] That! that, is the print of a foot, but 'tis the dark hair's; and small it is, too, for one of such a noble heighth and grand appearance! […] "
- 1963 [1962], Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, New York: W. W. Norton, →ISBN, page 4:
  The four of us were dressed in the heighth of fashion, which in those days was a pair of black very tight tights with the old jelly mould, as we called it, […]

References edit

WSU.EDU
Michael Quinion (1996–2024) “Heighth”, in World Wide Words.