highbred

highbred

English

Alternative forms

• high-bred

Etymology

high +‎ bred

Adjective

highbred (comparative more highbred, superlative most highbred)

1. (Of bred animals) Of high-quality stock.

   Black Beauty by Anna Sewell is the story of a highbred horse that leads a tough life in London pulling cabs.

2. (Of humans) Showing good breeding and refined manners.
   • 1919, Burton J. Hendrick, The Age of Big Business‎:

     Though highbred and luxury-loving, as a young man he was not averse to hard political work, and many old-timers still remember the days when "Bill" Whitney delivered cart-tail harangues on the lower east side.

   • 1903, Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee, Hortus Vitae‎:

     But I should like to turn the tables on these persons, and suggest that all this worrying about whether life is or is not worth living, and hunting for answers for and against, may itself be an excuse, unconscious like all the most mischievous excuses, and hide not finer demands and highbred discontents, but rather a certain feebleness, lack of grip and adaptation, and an indolent acquiescence in what my godchild stoutly refused, a greater or lesser going to bits.

   • 1897, George Madden Martin, The Angel of the Tenement‎:

     So, taking up their stand on the flagging outside the entrance of the big store, the bare-headed Angel, in her worn gingham frock, highbred and beautiful as a little princess, despite it, struck up with as much effect as a bird's twitter might make.