Bombastic in talk or behavior.
1848. I was at the Barnburners’ Convention in Utica, [where a man] got up and ground out what we term at the West a regular built fourth-of-July—star-spangled-banner—times-that-tried-men’s-souls—Jefferson speech, making gestures to suit the highfalutens.—Speech of Mr. Coombs in N.Y., Sept. 29 (Bartlett).
1854. Old Mrs. Peabody was allers a dreadful high-falutin critter, with stuck-up notions, and old P. is a soft head, driven by his wife, just as our old rooster is driven about by that cantankerous crabbed Dorking hen.—J. W. Spaulding in Weekly Oregonian, Dec. 23.
1856. Where’d dem horses a been now, if I had been one of your highfelutin sort, always driving round?—H. B. Stowe, ‘Dred,’ ch. vi.
1856. Well—we got ter skyfaluting about, and there was licker around, and pooty good rum too.—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 616 (June).
1857. Don’t laugh, boys, if I do get a little highfalutin’,—you don’t know how you’d have felt.—San Fr. Call, Feb. 19: from Cincinn. Enquirer.
1858. If you wish to be an “A No. 1” woman, you have got to “toe the mark,” and be less “hifalutin.”—J. G. Holland, ‘Titcomb’s Letters,’ p. 140.
1862. Edecated peepul, Kernel, ain’t got any more wit or common sense than other folks, but they try to make you believe they have, an will talk high-falutin words jest to frighten you if they kin.—‘Letters of Major Jack Downing,’ Aug. 14.
1885. On my return to Washington I met a high official of the navy, who said to me: “We received your highfalutin telegram about the Ericsson vessel.”—Admiral D. D. Porter, ‘Incidents of the Civil War,’ p. 62.
1909. An Englishman who knows the U.S. well, Mr. H. W. Horwill, has an article in the National Review asking if Americans are not provincial. One of the specifications, by which he would seek to justify an affirmative answer, is the persistence among us of the highfalutin’ style of oratory. Dickens satirized it, Proctor Knott made himself famous by going it several better, but the thing has not been killed.—N.Y. Evening Post, Jan. 25.
