tall [LME] Some words have undergone remarkable changes in meaning over the centuries. One such is tall. In medieval times it was used in such senses as ‘quick’, ‘handsome’, and later ‘good at fighting’. Only in the mid 16th century did the sense ‘of more than average height’ appear. A privileged or distinguished person who needs to be cut down to size may be referred to as a tall poppy, which originated in Australia in the mid 19th century. This goes back to a story about the Roman tyrant Tarquin, who is said to have struck off the heads of a row of poppies in a gruesomely graphic demonstration of the way in which the important men of a captured city should be treated, and ‘poppy’ was used to refer to this story from the mid 17th century.