high-hearted
adjEtymology From high + hearted.
1
Full of courage or nobleness; heroic.
- 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."1995, Gene Wolfe, Storeys from the Old Hotel, →ISBN, page 113:
- And she was in the world alone, Alone and old, but still high-hearted.1978, Margaret Fuller, Joel Myerson, Margaret Fuller: Essays on American Life and Letters, →ISBN, page 360:
1 more example
- 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.2010, A. E. Dupuy, The Conspirator, →ISBN, page 257:
2
Full of liveliness and passion, vivacious.
- "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.2011, Charles Bracelen Flood, Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year, →ISBN, page 24:
- 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!2007, Charles Lever, Lord Kilgobbin, →ISBN, page 40:
- Derived terms
- high-heartedly, high-heartedness