highflier

noun7

1. •
   A person who or a type of aircraft that flies at high elevations.
2. •
   (figurative) An ambitious person, especially one who takes risks or has an extravagant lifestyle.

   • under the appellations of Tory, Jacobite, highflier, and other cant words — 1711
3. •
   A glamorous stock that potentially offers high returns to investors.

   • Virtually all highfliers that I have seen over all these years of trading have crumbled at some point. — 2003
4. •
   A vertical pole used in commercial fishing to locate the beginning and end of a long fishing line.
5. •
   A swingboat.

   • […] 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! — 1871
6. •
   A type of phaeton carriage.

   • The emotions of those who journeyed for the first time on a railway at a speed four times as great as that of the swiftest High-flier that ever devoured the road are forgotten by this generation. — 1919
7. •
   (slang, no longer used) A writer of begging letters.