- 1浮誇的、華而不實的（形容言詞或計畫，聽起來漂亮卻空洞）
Used about language, ideas, or plans that sound grand and impressive but have little real meaning or little chance of happening. When you call a speech high-flown, you are saying the speaker chose big, beautiful words and said almost nothing — the words fly high above the ground, far from real life. It is always a criticism, though a polite and slightly literary one; you meet it in book reviews, newspaper columns, and careful writing rather than in daily chat. It goes most often with 'language', 'words', 'rhetoric', 'phrases', 'style', and also with 'ideas' or 'plans', where it means grand but unrealistic. A useful pair of neighbours: 'high-flown' points at emptiness dressed in fine clothes, while 'pompous' points at the speaker's self-importance and 'flowery' at too much decoration. So a wedding speech can be flowery and warm, but if you call it high-flown you are saying it was hollow.
組成high (高的) + flown (fly「飛」的過去分詞). 字面是「飛得高的」——飛得離地面太遠，也就離現實太遠，所以變成「空泛、不著邊際」。
同家族的字
- high-flyingsame high + fly image, but about real success
- flownthe past participle of fly, used unchanged here
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
high-flownadj
- 1
pretentiously eloquent; highly figurative
- Red River Settlement is, to use a high-flown expression, an oasis in the desert, and may be likened to a spot upon the moon or a solitary ship upon the ocean. In plain English, it is an isolated settlement on the borders of one of the vast prairies of North America.
- 2
lofty, extravagant, refined
- It seems to me he makes troubles, by expecting every one else to be as quixotic as himself. He is not likely to find high-flown notions among ordinary business men!
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。