Tall or high? – Synonymous Lexical Items

If a student asks you whether they should use tall or high, you may well be very aware of the difference in usage. However, it is likely that you will fall short when it comes to articulating what the difference is.

There are some primary tendencies in usage between the adjectives tall and high when referring to vertical distance and the vertical extent of the subject. 

Nevertheless, this post will argue that it’s essential to consult corpora to examine the nouns that are modified by the two words. Carrying out such a search when comparing synonymous lexical items generally reveals that one of the words (i.e. high) tends to be used in a metaphorical sense with more abstract nouns, while the other word frequently co-occurs with concrete nouns (in this case tall).

Tall or high? - Explaining the difference

Tall and high are often used interchangeably in spoken English. Therefore,  it’s vital to consider the contextual applications of the two words to explain the difference between them.

When do we use tall?

In English, we use the word tall to refer to the height of a person as well as inanimate objects which are thin and narrow, as well as tall. For instance, we can say:

• David is a really tall man
• Mark is really tall for his age
• I can’t believe how tall that giraffe is
• There are some incredibly tall trees in my local forest
• You know that very tall, white building just where the motorway begins – that’s where I work

When we use tall, we’re really thinking about the height of a subject from top to bottom. However, we do not use it in relation to something’s distance above ground level. For example, we would NOT say “that tall shelf is really hard to reach”. 

When do we use high?

The adjective, and indeed the adverb, high describes the distance of things which are a long way above the ground. As I alluded to in the previous section on tall, we also use high to refer to objects that are beyond our reach: 

• That shelf is really high. I can’t reach it.
• How do you expect me to climb to the top of this mountain? It’s way too high!

Another function of high is to describe the height of inanimate objects, particularly those that are wider than they are tall:

• My parents-in-law have got a really high front gate
• John’s house is at the top of a very high hill

Other inanimate objects which collocate with high:

• high ceiling
• high wall
• high heels
• high fence
• high curb

Comparing tall and high 

In certain contexts, it’s possible to use both tall and high. However, they carry slightly different meanings. If you’re confused over their use, the following comparison should help to clarify the situation:

(a) Jeddah Tower is 1 km tall

(b) Jeddah Tower is 1 km high

In this situation, tall refers to the height of Jeddah Tower in a numerical sense. However, high can also describe objects of extraordinary height or exceptional distances from the ground. Indeed, when completed, there won’t be any buildings in the world that are ‘higher’ than Jeddah Tower. Overall, we may use high for emphatic effect. 

Using corpora to get to know tendencies in the usage of words

This post has thus far provided a very general dictionary-like overview of the “tall or high” debate. 

As I stressed in my previous post on the use of corpora in English language teaching, it’s only when you turn to corpora that you really find out the tendencies in usage of two synonymous lexical items, such as tall and high.

Tsui (2004) discusses Tall versus high in a section titled ‘Synonymous lexical items’. The author refers to a corpora search carried out by staff at the Teachers of English Language Education Centre (TELEC) in Hong Kong. Essentially, TELEC staff searched the Modern English Corpus (MEC) in its own self-created TeleCorpora in order to examine the nouns which were modified by tall and high. Tsui’s (2004, p.45) notes the following in relation to the search:

there was a tendency for “high” to be used in a metaphorical sense with more abstract nouns whereas “tall” tended to be used more frequently with concrete nouns such as people, trees and buildings. 

Tsui (2004, p.46) refers to a further analysis of the MEC which revealed that there are 1,779 instances of high compared with only 96 cases of tall. Apart from nine instances in which tall is used idiomatically, such as “a tall order”, the rest are used in the context of talking about the height of people, buildings, and other items and structures. In this particular analysis, the highest frequency of tall co-occurs with people (roughly 50%) followed by buildings and structures (about 35%). In other words, the semantic possibilities of tall are somewhat limited. Conversely, the contexts in which high was found in the MEC turned out to be much more wide-ranging, including amount, intensity, quality and relative quantity.

Tall and high in the British National Corpus

Undoubtedly, the British National Corpus (BNC) contains a much larger variety of texts than the MEC in TeleCorpora. A simple search in the BNC of the single word high returns 37,700 instances but only 4,296 instances of tall. 

Using the collocates display, I broke down these results to assess typical post-position collocates of high and tall. Here are the results for the top 40 collocates with both words:

1. Tall

2. High

When it comes to tall, there is a noticeable emphasis on the height of people and inanimate objects in the results:

• tall man
• tall trees
• tall boy
• tall buildings
• tall woman
• tall chimney/s
• tall plant
• tall tower/s
• tall houses

Therefore, the BNC confirms the theory relating to tall which I outlined earlier. Namely, tall tends to refer to the height of people and inanimate objects which are thin and narrow. The adjective tall generally co-exists with proper nouns.

As for the collocates of high, there are few instances of usage in the context of the measurement of things, for example, “high mountains” and “high tower”. 

Setting the number of hits to 600, there is a smattering of instances where high is used as part of a proper noun, most notably 'High Court' (position 1 - 1715 instances) and 'High Street' (position 2 - 1157 instances). 

Compared with tall, high collocates with far more abstract nouns, such as 'high hopes' (136 instances) and 'high intelligence' (27 instances). One of the main conclusions to draw here is that high is used much less frequently to indicate measurement in height. 

However, there are many instances in the BNC where high is used to indicate quantity, frequency and intensity:

• high level / high levels (1533 instances for both)
• high proportion (505 instances)
• high degree (473 instances)
• high speed / high speeds (480 instances for both)
• high rate/high rates (355 instances for both)
• high incidence (121 instances)
• high ratio (27 instances)

Final Thoughts - Tall or High?

Overall, this post has highlighted the importance of consulting corpora to reveal the intricate differences in usage between two synonymous lexical items. For instance, I would never have guessed that we use high to such a great extent in an emphatic and metaphorical sense with more abstract nouns. 

The British National Corpus has almost become my Bible when it comes to planning exercises for my students based on, for example, delexical verbs and synonymous lexical items. I will certainly turn to the BNC when I explore the similarities and differences in usage between big and large in a future post.

Reference:

Davies, M. (2004) British National Corpus (from Oxford University Press). Available online at https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/

Tsui, A.B.M. (2004) ‘What teachers have always wanted to know’, in Sinclair, J.McH (ed.) How to use Corpora in Language Teaching, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp.39-61