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When should you use hoity-toity?
In modern use, hoity-toity is used almost exclusively to describe someone who's got their nose stuck up in the air, or something suited for such a person. But for over a hundred years, hoity-toity was used solely as a noun referring to thoughtless and silly behavior. The noun originated as a rhyming reduplication of the dialectical verb hoit, meaning "to play the fool." Accordingly, as an adjective hoity-toity was originally used to describe someone as thoughtless or silly—as when English writer W. Somerset Maugham wrote in his 1944 novel The Razor’s Edge "very hoity-toity of me not to know that royal personage"—but today it is more likely to describe the royal personage, or someone who puts on airs as if they were a royal personage.
Examples of hoity-toity in a Sentence
Maggie Fremont, Vulture, 10 Oct. 2025
Not to be hoity-toity or artsy or whatever.
—Brayden Garcia, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10 Oct. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Hoity-toity.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hoity-toity. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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