Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a fashionably dressed or smoothly mannered person; a hedonist [20C use is SE].

1852		Northampton Mercury 22 May 3/1: His honourable colleague was the clever, flashy, high-stepper while he himself was the plain, working, steady goer.
1860		Mrs J.H. Riddell Too Much Alone Ch. xxix n.p.: She still retained traces of former beauty; but it was of the ‘loud’ and termagent pattern— which makes a woman be called, when young and in good action, ‘showy’ and ‘a high-stepper’ .
1878		Dundee Courier 29 Nov. 7/2: She was a tall, well-developed young lady [...] all pink silk and white lace — this was the high-stepper, ‘the regular clipper’, who had reduced the stony heart of Marcus Dagnell into softness.
1883		M.E. Kennard Right Sort 225: She’s a high stepper is she? Proud, I suppose, and stuck up?
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 27 July 7/1: ‘Mean to say high-steppers like those [girls] can spoof you?’.
1890		A.C. Gunter Miss Nobody of Nowhere 103: I’m pretty certain she’s English and a high stepper.
1895		Manchester Times 4 Jan. 8/4: My eye! but that’s an uncommon smart girl! A regular high-stepper and no mistake.
1904		‘O. Henry’ Cabbages and Kings 331: She was one of the genuine high-steppers.
1907		Townsville Dly Bulletin (Qld) 2 Oct. 3/3: As she walked down the town, / Said old Mick: ‘Strike me brown, / She’s a high stepper, sure, from Ostend’.
1910		L. Esson Woman Tamer in Ballades of Old Bohemia (1980) 64: Ain’t she a high-stepper?
1924		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 10 Dec. [synd. col.] And while the price is said to have conducted himself with fitting decorum it gave a lot of the high steppers a chance to step.
1936		Nottingham Eve. Post 18 May 1/2: A girl who paints her nails is a ‘high-stepper’.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 111: Sure, there’s a foine thriving lady for ye – a hoigh sthepper if iver there was wan.
1940		H. Drake-Brockman Hot Gold I iii: Girlie’s as pretty as any of the highsteppers.
1971		F.P. Grove Tales from the Margin 27: Yeh [...] she’s a looker, all right; and a high-stepper, too.
1987		H.O. Dance Stormy Monday 134: Of course, every now and then he’d come across a high-stepper, a show girl with looks, used to things going her way.

2. (US) a tough, resilient person.

1880		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 18 Dec. 3/3: ‘I’m a roarin’ ripsnorter from a hoorah camp [...] and all you starved bums [...] come up here and have a drink with a throughbred high-stepper for once’.
1925		Odum & Johnson Negro and His Songs (1964) 234: Great big nigger, settin’ on a log, / One eye on trigger, one eye on hog, [...] An’ he jumped on de hog wid all his grip, / Singin’ high-stepper, Lawd, you shall be free.
1929		The Hokum Boys ‘Somebody’s Been Using That Thing’ 🎵 He used to be a high-stepper / But now he can’t walk at all.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 53: I knew they couldn’t stop a stepper.
1982		H.S. Perry Psychiatrist of America 73: Uncle Ed was beyond Harry’s wildest hopes—a glamorous and successful figure, a high-stepper, and almost a Protestant.
2000		S. Jones Anatomy of an Amer. Corporation 183: Hell, this ain’t no problem for a high stepper like me.

3. (Aus.) a self-satisfied person.

1959

H. Drake-Brockman ‘The North-west Ladies’ West Coast Stories 161: Alf wasn’t much of a man for a high-stepper like Mrs. Giblit.