a., adv., sb.
A. adj. As high as the breast.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (1703), 157. Part of the Battlement being Breast high.
1716. Lond. Gaz., No. 5472/2. The Water was Breast high.
1823. J. Badcock, Dom. Amusem., 207. The rider has a breast-high support ascending from his seat.
B. adv.
1. To the height or depth of the breast.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia, II. (1590), 149 b (J.). The Riuer it selfe gaue way vnto her, so that she was streight brest high.
1678. Massacre in Irel., 8. They saw one like a Woman rise out of the River breast-high.
1854. J. Abbott, Napoleon (1855), I. xxxv. 556. Some … wading breast high, reached the opposite bank.
2. Said in Hunting of the scent when it is so strong that the hounds go at a racing pace with their heads erect.
1858. Kingsley, Ode to N.-E. Wind, 30. Hark! the brave North-Easter! Breast-high lies the scent.
1868. R. Eg.-Warburton, Hunt. Songs, lvi. When we fly with a scent breast high, and a galloping fox before us.
C. sb. A tunnel or horizontal entrance into a coal-mine, so low that the miner has to stoop: in Lancash. dial. breast-hee.
1850. Bamford, Tim Bobbin, Introd. 3, in Lanc. Gloss. (E. D. S.). The collier brought his coal to daylight at the mouth of a … breast-hee, generally opening out not unlike a large black sough, on some hill-side.
1857. E. Waugh, Lanc. Sk., 44, ibid. At the mouth of a lonely breast-hee on his native moor-side.
