head and shoulders
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English
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Adverb
head and shoulders (not comparable)
- (idiomatic) To a considerable degree.
- She was head and shoulders better than any of her rivals.
- He was head and shoulders above the others in the law firm.
- 1941 March, Mercury, “American Express Train Services in 1940”, in Railway Magazine, page 99:
- Both the New York Central and Pennsylvania systems, which in speed tower head-and-shoulders over other American lines, have added substantially to their high speed mileage between 1939 and 1940, [...].
- By force; violently.
- to drag somebody head and shoulders
- 1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics:
- They bring in every figure and scheme of speech, head and shoulders.
Noun
- (finance) A characteristic formation on a technical analysis chart where two lower peaks appear around a central higher peak.
References
- “head and shoulders above”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.