as in intellectual
much given to learning and thinking
finally, a TV series that appeals to a highbrow audience
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in nerd
a person with strong intellectual interests
guests at her elegant dinner parties are a mix of the city's highbrows and captains of industry
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of highbrow
Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2023
Tár is its highbrow counterpart, teasing and celebrating the same personal crisis and class issues.
—Armond White, National Review, 27 Jan. 2023
But in the pandemic’s wake, the chief human resources officer has morphed into a highbrow position, working with CEOs to drive attraction and retention among a myriad of other talent operations.
—Paolo Confino, Fortune, 4 Jan. 2023
Margot Robbie, playing Barbie, is clad in an exact re-creation of the original Barbie’s outfit; Gerwig is clearly thinking about the interplay between highbrow and lowbrow, between art and commercialism.
—Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 19 Dec. 2022
See All Example Sentences for highbrow
Noun
The roll call of films ranges from the highbrow to the decidedly grungy, the menu of a true movie fanatic.
—Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Sep. 2023
Tár is its highbrow counterpart, teasing and celebrating the same personal crisis and class issues.
—Armond White, National Review, 27 Jan. 2023
But in the pandemic’s wake, the chief human resources officer has morphed into a highbrow position, working with CEOs to drive attraction and retention among a myriad of other talent operations.
—Paolo Confino, Fortune, 4 Jan. 2023
Margot Robbie, playing Barbie, is clad in an exact re-creation of the original Barbie’s outfit; Gerwig is clearly thinking about the interplay between highbrow and lowbrow, between art and commercialism.
—Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 19 Dec. 2022
See All Example Sentences for highbrow
Recent Examples of Synonyms for highbrow
Adjective
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Iran has cultivated an astonishing intellectual and artistic depth with far fewer resources than many other nations.—
Rebecca Ruth Gould,
JSTOR Daily,
9 Apr. 2025
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Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI.—
James Surowiecki,
The Atlantic,
8 Apr. 2025
Adjective
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Our cerebral circuitry changes constantly—every day, new links are made amongst the 86 billion individual neurons in our heads, and old connections are allowed to fall away.—
Laura Baisas,
Popular Science,
17 Apr. 2025
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While athleticism doesn’t hurt, the cerebral nature of safety shows minimal correlation between extreme athleticism and success at the next level.—
Paul Dehner Jr.,
New York Times,
14 Apr. 2025
Adjective
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Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research.—
Cyril Labbé,
The Conversation,
31 Jan. 2025
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Federal law prohibits universities from discussing individual students' disciplinary records, but the University takes these violations of our rules and scholarly norms seriously.—
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten,
Fox News,
30 Jan. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Highbrow.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/highbrow. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.
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