hauteur

From French hauteur.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /oʊˈtɝ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɔːˈtɜː/, /əʊˈtɜː/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)
• Homophone: auteur

hauteur (countable and uncountable, plural hauteurs)

1. Haughtiness or arrogance; loftiness.
   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing chapter XII

     “What's happened, young Herring?” I think for a moment he was about to draw himself up with hauteur and say he would prefer, if we didn't mind, not to discuss his private affairs, but when he was half-way up he caught Aunt Dahlia's eye and returned to position one.

   • 1992, Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 31

     […] as, indeed, a new subject presented itself now, "Here's our turn!" braking the Toyota and turning the wheel sharply without having had time to signal so, close behind them, an angered motorist sounded his horn, but The Senator took no heed: not out of arrogance or hauteur but, simply, because he took no heed.

   • 1997, David Foster Wallace, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group:

     I imagine the Dreamward’s Hotel Manager to be an avuncular Norwegian with a rag sweater and a soothing odor of Borkum Rif about him, a guy w/o sunglasses or hauteur who throws open the pressurized doors to the Dreamward’s Bridge and galley and Vacuum Sewage System and personally takes me through, offering pithy and quotable answers to questions before I’ve even asked them.

haut +‎ -eur

• ^{(aspirated h)} IPA^(key): /o.tœʁ/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -œʁ
• Homophones: auteur, auteurs, hauteurs

hauteur f (plural hauteurs)

1. height, altitude

   La hauteur du Mont Everest est de 8.848 mètres.

2. arrogance
3. (geometry) height

   La hauteur d'un parallélogramme est perpendiculaire à sa base.

4. (music) pitch

• haut

• “hauteur” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).