highlight

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From high +‎ light.

Pronunciation

Noun

highlight (plural highlights)

  1. (painting, photography) An area or a spot in a drawing, painting, or photograph that is strongly illuminated.
    Antonym: lowlight
    • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Library of America, published 1985, page 114:
      The image blurred into the highlight, like something familiar seen beneath disturbed though clear water; he looked at the familiar image with a kind of quiet horror and despair, at a face suddenly older in sin than he would ever be, a face more blurred than sweet, at eyes more secret than soft.
  2. (figurative) An especially significant or interesting detail or event or period of time.
    Meeting my future wife was the highlight of my trip to Spain.
    We'll be broadcasting the news highlights every half an hour.
  3. (cosmetics) A strand or spot of hair dyed a different color than the rest.
    Hyponym: lowlight

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Verb

highlight (third-person singular simple present highlights, present participle highlighting, simple past and past participle highlighted or (nonstandard) highlit)

  1. (transitive) To make prominent; emphasize.
    • 2011 December 21, Helen Pidd, “Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis”, in The Guardian:
      The Guardian has spoken to dozens of Europeans who have left, or are planning to leave. Their stories highlight surprising new migration routes – from Lisbon to Luanda, Dublin to Perth, Barcelona to Buenos Aires – as well as more traditional migration patterns.
    • 2011, Rowan Cruft, Matthew H. Kramer, Mark R. Reiff, Crime, Punishment, and Responsibility, page 16:
      Farmer highlights the fact that the reasons why causing offence is (or is not) deemed criminalizable are often historically specific, and follows Duff in counselling against attempts to ground criminalization in some 'master principle' []
    • 2013, R. Green, C.A. Bean, Sung Hyon Myaeng, The Semantics of Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, →ISBN, page 15:
      The proposal in connection with taxonymy is that a taxonym must (a) further specify a highlighted feature of the hypernym and (b) must similarly highlight it. From this it will follow that the reason stallion and foal are not good taxonyms of horse, is that they highlight features not highlighted in horse; a similar explanation holds for blonde and woman; likewise, prostitute is not a good taxonym of woman because it highlights profession, but is a good taxonym of sex-worker, because it specifies further and highlights what is highlighted in sex-worker, namely, type of work.
    • 2015 October 10, “Rapid Changes in Cortical and Subcortical Brain Regions after Early Bilateral Enucleation in the Mouse”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI:
      Severe disruptions in the visual cortex was also observed when disrupting cholinergic retinal waves in ephrin double knockout (ephrin-A2/A5) mice, thus highlighting the importance of neural activity and ephrin-As acting together to control retinogeniculate and retinocortical patterning in normal development.
    • 2020 October 21, “Network News: No special agreements for open access operators”, in Rail, page 20:
      In a Commons Written Reply to Shadow Rail Minister Tan Dhesi, regarding any assessment of the impact on open access operators by the decision to move away from franchising [] , Heaton-Harris highlighted that non-franchised operators run trains without a contractual relationship with Government.
    • 2023 April 11 [2023 April 10], Sarah Elbeshbishi, “Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley slams Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis in campaign letter”, in USA Today, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 April 2023:
      Former United Nations ambassador and current GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley slammed fellow Republicans former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Monday in a campaign letter highlighting Haley’s first quarter accomplishments.
  2. (transitive) To be a highlight of.
  3. (transitive) To mark (important passages of text), e.g. with a fluorescent marker pen or in a wordprocessor, as a means of memory retention or for later reference.
  4. (transitive) To dye (part of the hair) a different color than the rest.
  5. (transitive, Internet) To seek the attention of (a user) on IRC by mentioning their name in a message, causing that message to appear highlighted on their screen.
    • 2006, Frans Pop, “Re: Bug#378404: installation guide: one more additional proposal”, in linux.debian.maint.boot (Usenet):
      You could have asked: is there a reason this easy patch was not applied, either on IRC or private mail by me. You did write a comment on IRC and I did see it. Problem is that you did not highlight me _and_ you did not wait for an answer.
    • 2013, Jens Rehsack, “Re: AnyData open API”, in perl.dbi.dev (Usenet):
      You must be somewhere completely different. I’ve looked for several days and don’t see you. But: I’m kind of blind from time to time - please feel free to highlight me () or probably (H. Merijn Brand) Tux or vanHoesel (Theo van Hoesel).

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English highlight

Noun

highlight m (plural highlights)

  1. (broadcasting) highlight
    • 2009 June 3, Borch, “Tema Eto'o”, in es.rec.deportes.futbol (Usenet):
      Un jugador espectacular para ver en los "highlights", pero no creo quesu estilo de juego encaje con el de este equipo.
      A brilliant player to watch in the highlights, but I don't think his play style fits with his team's.