1864 E. Sargent Peculiar ix. 71 I love to meet a high-tone gemmleman, and you're one. Capting, allow me to shake yer hand.

1898 Christian Herald 19 Jan. 44/4 The infernal delusion that it was not high-tone for women to learn a profitable calling.

1925 F. S. Fitzgerald Let. 27 Dec. (1964) 194 Saw Leslie also and went on some very high-tone parties.

1998 B. Callaghan Barrelhouse Kings iv. iii. 247 There was a slight curl at the corner of his lip, a clawtrack of anger under his high tone haughty air.

2010 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 10 Dec. d1 They don't so much talk to each other as bandy high-tone prose.

1871 N. Amer. Rev. Apr. 449 The high-tone syllable of these words is not long now, and was not in the Old High German, either by nature or by position.

1923 Bull. School Oriental Stud. 3 125 This significant tone of the future of all high tone verbs need not be specially marked in broad transcriptions.

1964 J. Carnochan in D. Abercrombie Daniel Jones 403 All these examples have a high-tone initial syllable.

1965 Language 41 347 A toneless base..to which I would add..three affixes (the high-tone superfix, the suffix -a, and the mid-tone super fix) to produce the noun.

2012 J. McWhorter & J. Good Gram. Saramaccan Creole ii. 61 The intonation patterns of yes/no questions..involve a higher pitch at the end of an utterance by virtue of a final high-tone question marker.

1812 H. Lee Mem. War Southern Dept. U.S. I. xxvii. 353 The season rather cold than cool; the body was braced, and the mind high toned by the state of the weather.

1859 Excursion Putnam Phalanx 54 With her [sc. Rhode Island's] power inextricably lodged in the hands of her People—with her Spirit, in general, high-toned by Good Morals and Religion.

1888 Freeman's Jrnl. (Dublin) 18 Sept. 7/5 The attendance will be ‘high-toned’ by the presence of the Viceroy.

1997 L. P. Schultz Governing Amer. ii. 34 Stretch the links that tie the people and the government together. View representation..as an opportunity for ‘high-toning’ government and, thereby, making it as efficient and capable as is possible.

2007 Amer. Interest Nov. 113/1 He was profoundly inventive in his quest for new modes of refining and high-toning the democratic soul.

1917 J. M. Grider Diary 16 Oct. in War Birds (1926) 34 He got hightoned by the Colonel and lost his head.

1922 S. Merwin Goldie Green iii. 54 There's something I do want to say to you, but the way you've been high-toning me it's hard to get natural.

1961 M. Sandoz Love Song to Plains (1966) iv. 84 Now he was going all around those foreign countries that had high-toned him, high-nosing them.