Word of the Day

: July 7, 2016

hoity-toity

adjective hoy-tee-TOY-tee

What It Means

1 : thoughtlessly silly or frivolous : flighty

2 : marked by an air of assumed importance : highfalutin

hoity-toity in Context

"… she was by no means hoity-toity, but a thinking, reasoning being of the profoundest intellectual, or, rather, the highest artistic tendencies." — Theodore Dreiser, The Titan, 1914

"Usually Tanglewood's summer lineup is too hoity-toity for the great unwashed to care, but Beach Boys' legend and cofounder Brian Wilson performing the entire album 'Pet Sounds' is enough to give any summer concertgoer a good vibration." — Craig S. Semon, The Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Massachusetts), 3 June 2016

Did You Know?

Today we most often use hoity-toity as an adjective, but before it was an adjective it was a noun meaning "thoughtless giddy behavior." The noun, which first appeared in print in 1668, was probably created as a singsongy rhyme based on the dialectal English word hoit, meaning "to play the fool." The adjective hoity-toity can stay close to its roots and mean "foolish" ("… as though it were very hoity-toity of me not to know that royal personage." — W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge), but in current use it more often means "pretentious."