跳高 (tiào gāo) is a track-and-field sport in which athletes jump over a horizontal bar set at increasing heights without knocking it down. The word combines two characters: 跳 (tiào), meaning 'to jump', and 高 (gāo), meaning 'high' or 'height'. Together, they literally mean 'jump high' — a direct description of the athletic action. It’s used exclusively to refer to the competitive event, not general jumping.

This term appears in sports reports, school physical education curricula, Olympic coverage, and casual conversation about athletics. While it can be used as a noun ('He competes in the high jump') or occasionally as a verb ('She will high jump tomorrow'), its noun usage is far more common. It’s a compound noun formed by verb + adjective, following a typical Chinese pattern for naming sports like 跑步 (running) or 游泳 (swimming).