Etymology: Old English híehþo (also later héahþu ) = Old Low German *hôhitha (Middle Dutch hogede , hochte , hoochte , Dutch hoogte , Middle Low German hogede , Low German högte ), Old High German hôhida (Middle High German hoehede ), Gothic hauhiþa , < hauh- high adj. + abstract ending -iþa : see -th suffix¹. From the 13th cent. the final -th after -ȝ , -gh varied with t (compare drought , drouth ). In Middle English the forms in -t were predominant in the north, and since 1500 have increasingly prevailed in the literary language; though heighth , highth were abundant in southern writers till the 18th cent., and are still affected by some. The stem-vowel has generally been ē , ey , ei , though forms in i occur from 13th cent., especially in northern writers, hicht being the typical Scottish form from 14th cent.; in English hight is found from 15th cent., and was very common in 16th and 17th centuries; highth was also very common in 17th cent. and was the form used by Milton. The hei- forms come lineally down from Old English (Anglian héhþo ); the hi- forms are due in the main to later assimilation to high adj. Current usage is a compromise, retaining the spelling height (which has been by far the most frequent written form since 1500), with the pronunciation of hight. N.E.D. (1898) enters this under the double headword height, highth but gives only the pronunciation (həiþ) /haɪθ/.

Etymology: < height n.