Sekirov Dictionary

hoity-toity

/ˈhɔɪtiˈtɔɪti/

noun 3
adjective 2
adverb 2
exclamation 1
forms 5

noun3

•
(dialect, UK) A young woman regarded as flighty, giddy, or silly.
- Whily Kate the Brown, the Plump, / The Frowzy Browzy, / Hoyty Toyty, / Covent-Garden Harridan, / Soon made poor Jockey’s Head to Ake, / And spoyl’d him for a merry Man. — 1719
•
(no longer used) Flighty, giddy, or silly behaviour; also, noisy merriment.
- And I'll divert ye with my Hoyty toyty; / With Fortune's choicest Blessings may regale ye, / And Wealth, and Wine, and Women, never fail ye. — 1719
•
(no longer used) Behaviour adopted to demonstrate one's superiority; pretentious or snobbish behaviour; airs and graces.
- [O]ne piece of early homage still / Exacted of you; after your three bouts / At hoitytoity, great men with long words, / And so forth,— […] — 1875

adjective2

•
Affected or pretentious, sometimes with the implication of displaying an air of excessive fanciness or ostentation; pompous, self-important, snobbish; often displaying a feeling of patronizing self-aggrandizing or arrogant class superiority.
- [S]ee what hoity-toity airs she took[…]. — 1819
•
(no longer used) Flighty, giddy, silly; also, merry in a noisy manner.
- [W]e have been married fifteen Years, I take it: and that hoighty toighty business ought, in Conscience, to be over. — 1690

adverb2

(no longer used) Flightily, giddily.
•
(no longer used) Merrily, in a noisy manner.
- Then hoity, toity, / VVhisking, frisking, / Green vvas her govvn upon the grass: / Oh! such vvere the joys of our dancing days. — 1762

exclamation1

•
(old-fashioned) Expressing disapprobation or surprise at acts or words that are pompous or snobbish, or flighty.
- Hoity toity, VVhat have I to do vvith his Dreams or his Divination—Body o' me, this is a Trick to defer Signing the Conveyance. — 1695

forms

hoity-toities · hoity-toitier · more hoity-toity · hoity-toitiest · most hoity-toity

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