high-hearted

See also: highhearted

English

Etymology

high +‎ hearted

Adjective

high-hearted (comparative more high-hearted, superlative most high-hearted)

1. Full of courage or nobleness, heroic.
   • 1995, Gene Wolfe, Storeys from the Old Hotel, →ISBN, page 113:

     A younger man, who had reined up next to the one Miles called "lord," snorted. "If that boy is high-hearted, or a fierce fighter, either, I'll eat his breeks."

   • 1978, Margaret Fuller, Joel Myerson, Margaret Fuller: Essays on American Life and Letters, →ISBN, page 360:

     And she was in the world alone, Alone and old, but still high-hearted.

   • 2010, A. E. Dupuy, The Conspirator, →ISBN, page 257:

     The result proved that he did not yet know the high-hearted woman who, whatever her faults might be, was yet capable of sacrificing all with cheerfulness to follow him to the prison — or even to the scaffold.

2. Full of liveliness and passion, vivacious.
   • 2011, Charles Bracelen Flood, Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year, →ISBN, page 24:

     "She was not exactly a beauty," Emma said of Julia, mentioning that one of Julia's eyes would go out of focus in a cross-eyed condition known as strabismus, “but she was possessed of a lively and pleasing countenance.” There was more to Julia than that: high-hearted, charming, generous, and very intelligent, she was invariably at the center of every social gathering, the favorite of girls and young men alike.

   • 2007, Charles Lever, Lord Kilgobbin, →ISBN, page 40:

     It was not merely its quiet monotony, its unbroken sameness of topics as of events, and its small economies, always appearing on the surface; but that a young girl like Kate, full of life and spirits, gay, handsome, and high-hearted, — that she should go her mill-round of these tiresome daily cares, listening to the same complaints, remedying the same evils, meeting the same difficulties, and yet never seem to resent an existence so ignoble and unworthy!