highflier

• high flier, high-flier, high flyer, high-flyer, highflyer

• IPA^(key): /haɪˈflaɪə(ɹ)/

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highflier (plural highfliers)

1. A person who or a type of aircraft that flies at high elevations.
2. (idiomatic) An ambitious person, especially one who takes risks or has an extravagant lifestyle.
   • c. 1711, Jonathan Swift, Some Remarks Upon A Pamphlet, Entitl'd, A Letter To The Seven Lords Of The Committee, Appointed To Examine Gregg

     under the appellations of Tory, Jacobite, highflier, and other cant words

3. (fishing) A vertical pole used in commercial fishing to locate the beginning and end of a long fishing line.
4. (finance) A glamorous stock that potentially offers high returns to investors.
   • 2003, Larry Williams, The Right Stock at the Right Time (page 93)

     Virtually all highfliers that I have seen over all these years of trading have crumbled at some point.

   • 2008, George Angell, Small Stocks for Big Profits

     I like Canadian stocks and have done quite well investing in them, but you are typically better off buying a stock on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada's leading exchange, than some of the highfliers in Vancouver.

5. A swingboat.
   • 1871, The Contemporary Review (volume 18, page 392)

     […] and high-flyer boat-swings, full of half-drunken men and half-mad, screaming girls, swing up to perilous heights, and all but whirl over, as if to shoot out the whole of their frantic cargoes!

   • 1980, Journal of Meteorology (volume 5, page 9)

     A small copper-plate representation of Frost Fair […] Among the activities shown are Letterpress Printing, Copperplate Printing, a Sheep to be roasted, Ballad Singers, Swinging (in boat-shaped swings called the 'high Flyer'), playing at Skittles, […]