Green’s Dictionary of Slang

intellectual; often with pej. overtones.

1848		Leics. Mercury 15 Jan. 4/1: It was no ancient fisherman / Who found this wonderous prize; / But a pale, high-browed student. / With bright and earnest eyes / who sought [...] the heart of nature’s mysteries.
1861		Dundee Advertiser 16 Dec. 2/3: The handsome, high-browed, intellectual Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
1870		Era 11 Dec. 9/2: The machinery devised by calm, high-browsed, thoughtful philosophers in their laboratories.
1897		Dundee Courier 29 Sept. 6/7: ‘You must admit,’ said the high-browed woman, ’that many a man has gone to heaven solely through the efforts of huis wife’.
1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xviii: A bunch of these high-browed clucks jump all over the villages, ladies of the court, etc.
1914		‘Ian Hay’ Lighter Side of School Life 79: Mr. Bull was not a great scholar: some of the ‘highbrow’ members of the Staff professed to despise his humble attainments.
1921		D.L. Sayers Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1977) 244: I may not be highbrow, but I have some ideas beyond the front row of the chorus.
1921		N. Putnam West Broadway 40: ‘Well, he says [actors] belonged to the parasitic class [...] and that highbrow language didn’t get by me’.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 61: Flapper: We look at the show [...] and throw paper balls at everyone who looks highbrow.
1937		Lil Hardin Armstrong ‘Born to Swing’ 🎵 Now all the gals on Park Avenue have a high-brow song to sing.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 115: I ain’t kept in touch with the highbrow world.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 151: We could put in some bits of poetry in order to make it more highbrow.
1961		R. Gover One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding 97: To get back to this highbrow show.
1971		Wodehouse Much Obliged, Jeeves 112: Not a bad show, I thought, though a bit highbrow.
1999		Observer Screen 4 July 2: South Park‘s [...] highbrow progenitors, had their share of fun with the guardians of propriety.
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 99: Moviemaking, once a highbrow craft associated with the creative goyishe genius of Tennessee Williams, Nabakov, Dali, and Faulkner.