Other forms: tallest, taller
Tall means going a long way up. A tall man ducking under a doorframe, the tall tree at the end of the garden, a tall glass of water with ice in it.
Tall takes a measurement in front of it in a way few adjectives do: she is six feet tall, the fence is two metres tall, and the standard question is "How tall are you?" — never "how high". That is the line to hold on to. Use tall for people, trees, buildings and anything thin standing upright; use high for mountains, walls, shelves and anything measured off the ground. Its opposite is short for people and trees, low for things. A tall order is a demand that is hard to meet; a tall tale is a story too good to be true.
1adjectivetallHigher than average in height, of a person, plant or building.~39%
“Her brother is so tall he has to duck under the beam.”
synonyms: towering, lofty
2adjectivestatedOf a stated height, used after the measurement.~59%
“The fence is two metres tall.”
3adjectivenarrowHigh and narrow in shape, of a glass, bottle or similar object.~2%
“He poured the juice into a tall glass.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Tall has moved further from its beginnings than almost any English word. Middle English tall meant seemly, handsome, valiant, big; before that Old English ġetæl meant "swift, ready, having mastery of", from Proto-Germanic *talaz, "submissive, pliable, obedient". The Oxford English Dictionary calls the sense development remarkable, and it is: from obedient to towering in a few hundred years.
Proto-Indo-European
*dol-
Proto-Germanic
*talaz — submissive, pliable, obedient
Old English
*tæl
Middle English
tall
English, today
tall
Built from
From Middle English tall, talle, tal (“seemly, becoming, handsome, good-looking, excellent, good, valiant, lively in speech, bold, great, large, big”), from Old English tæl, ġetæl (“swift, ready, having mastery of”), from Proto-Germanic talaz (“submissive, pliable, obedient”), from Proto-Indo-European dol-, del- (“to aim, calculate, adjust, reckon”). Cognate with Scots tal (“high, lofty, tall”), Old Frisian tel (“swift”), Old Saxon gital (“quick”), Old High German gizal (“active, agile”), Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍄𐌰𐌻𐍃 (“indocile, disobedient”). The Oxford English Dictionary notes: "The sense development [of tall] is remarkable, but is paralleled more or less by that of other adjectives expressing estimation, such as buxom, canny, clean, clever, cunning, deft, elegant, handsome, pretty, proper; German klein, as compared with English clean, presents the antithesis to modern tall as compared to tall in early Middle English. It has been conjectured that in the sense 'high of stature' it is a different word, adopted from the Welsh tal in some sense; but the latter is, according to Professor Rhŷs, merely a 16th-century borrowing of the English word (in Owen Pughe's Dictionary erroneously mixed up with the genuine Welsh word tal (“end, brow, forehead”), with which it has no possible connection.)"
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA