hoity-toity

Meaning

Noun

1. (archaic, uncountable) Behaviour adopted to demonstrate one's superiority; pretentious or snobbish behaviour; airs and graces.
2. (obsolete, uncountable) Flighty, giddy, or silly behaviour; also, noisy merriment.
3. (British, countable, dialectal) A young woman regarded as flighty, giddy, or silly.

Adj

1. 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.
2. (obsolete) Flighty, giddy, silly; also, merry in a noisy manner.

Adv

1. (obsolete) Flightily, giddily.
2. (obsolete) Merrily, in a noisy manner.

Intj

Expressing disapprobation or surprise at acts or words that are pompous or snobbish, or flighty.

Synonyms

highfalutin

la-di-da

grandiose

hifalutin

highfaluting

light-mindedness

lordly

thoughtlessness

haughty

superiority

arrogant

susceptible

hoyden

huffiness

huffy

aristocratic

touchy

noise

petulant

pompous

romp

romping

snooty

snotty

sound

🔉

stand-offish

bumptious

flighty

frolicsome

giddy

grandiloquent

stuck-up

Translations

eingebildet

hochnäsig

prunkvoll

πομπώδης

grandiose

pompeux

qui se donne des airs

taratata

affettato

lezioso

ricercato

spocchioso

amplificativo

pontificaal

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈhɔɪtiˈtɔɪti/

Etymology

Probably from hoit (“to behave frivolously and thoughtlessly; to play the fool”) + -y (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘having the quality of’), reduplicated with a change of the initial consonant. The noun is attested earlier than the adjective.