highbrow

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

highbrow

"person of superior intellect and taste," 1902, back-formation from high-browed (adj.), which is attested from 1891, from high + brow (cf. also lowbrow).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Slang Dictionary

highbrow definition

n.
an intellectual person; a person with refined tastes. (Compare this with lowbrow. See also longhair.) : The highbrows usually congregate in there.
mod.
having to do with an intellectual or a person with refined tastes. : Pete is sort of highbrow, but he's an okay guy.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Example sentences

His voice had the crooning humor of a highbrow vaudevillian.

The team succeeds in developing their highbrow processor, which not only meets expectations, but begins thinking for itself.

But this same small locale is also deeply interesting in highbrow ways.

Promenade along the harborside boardwalk before dinner at one of the highbrow, on-site eateries.

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Related Words

midcult

middlebrow

Matching Quote

"The function of the hero in art is to inspire the reader or spectator to continue in the same spirit from where he, the hero, leaves off. He must release the spectator's potentiality, for potentiality is the historic force behind nobility. And to do this the hero must be typical of the characters and class who at that time only need to be made aware of their heroic potentiality in order to be able to make their society juster and nobler. Bourgeois culture is no longer capable of producing heroes. On the highbrow level it only produces characters who are embodied consolations for defeat, and on the lowbrow level it produces idols—stars, TV "personalities," pin-ups. The function of the idol is the exact opposite to that of the hero. The idol is self-sufficient; the hero never is. The idol is so superficially desirable, spectacular, witty, happy that he or she merely supplies a context for fantasy and therefore, instead of inspiring, lulls. The idol is based on the appearance of perfection; but never on the striving towards it."

-John Berger