Remarkable, prodigious. 1670, N.E.D.
1840. I never seen taller lying than that at a ward meeting!—Knick. Mag., xv. 378 (May).
1844. These men who are hankering after the “spoils of office” had just as well prepare themselves for one of the tallest falls they ever got.—Mr. Hardin of Illinois, House of Repr., March 21: Cong. Globe, p. 631, App.
1853. A remarkable case of tall swearing came off before the Recorder a day or two ago.—Daily Morning Herald, St. Louis, June 29.
1853. We hear the beginning of some tall swearing behind us, but the half-formed anathemas die away on the breeze.—Knick. Mag., xlii. 58 (July).
1857. He was n’t by any means so well off or so proud but that it was the tallest kind of a treat for him when he could afford to buy a small boiled lobster of a man who used to sell them out of a wheelbarrow in front of Boylston Market.—Id., xlix. 38 (Jan.).
1861. This is the kind of country we’ll catch the Yankees in, if they come to invade us. They’ll have some pretty tall swimming, and get knocked on the head, if ever they gets to land. I wish there was ten thousand of the cusses in it this minute.—W. H. Russell, ‘My Diary, North and South,’ April 16.
1869. It was said of old Ewell that he could swear the scalp off an Apache any time; and one can readily imagine that he did some tall swearing on this occasion.—J. Ross Browne, ‘Adventures in the Apache Country,’ p. 156.
1880. As I do everything with all my might, I became satisfied that, if I indulged at all, I would be very apt to do some very tall drinking.—Peter H. Burnett, ‘Recollections and Opinions of an Old Pioneer,’ p. 37 (N.Y.).
