Meaning

(uncountable, archaic) Behaviour adopted to demonstrate one's superiority; pretentious or snobbish behaviour; airs and graces..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable, archaic) Behaviour adopted to demonstrate one's superiority; pretentious or snobbish behaviour; airs and graces.
2. (uncountable, obsolete) Flighty, giddy, or silly behaviour; also, noisy merriment.
3. (countable, British, dialectal) A young woman regarded as flighty, giddy, or silly.
4. 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.
5. (obsolete) Flighty, giddy, silly; also, merry in a noisy manner.
6. Flightily, giddily.
7. Merrily, in a noisy manner.
8. (dated) Expressing disapprobation or surprise at acts or words that are pompous or snobbish, or flighty.

Example Sentences

[O]ne piece of early homage still / Exacted of you; after your three bouts / At hoitytoity, great men with long words, / And so forth,— […]

The VViddovvs I observ'd that vvere marching off, vvith the marque out of their mouths, vvere hugely concern'd to be thought Young, and ſtill talking of Maſques, Balls, Fiddles, Treats; Chanting and Jigging to every tune they heard, and all upon the Hoyty-Toyty like mad vvenches of fifteen.

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.

If this [Georges] Danton were to burst your meshwork!—Very curious indeed to consider. It turns on a hair: and what a Hoitytoity was there, Justice and Culprit changing places; and the whole History of France running changed!

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.

[S]ee what hoity-toity airs she took[…].

The other models were gas fun, though they were all a bit hoity-toity.

[W]e have been married fifteen Years, I take it: and that hoighty toighty buſineſs ought, in Conſcience, to be over.

Word Forms

• hoity-toities
• hoitytoity
• hoity toity
• hoity-toitier
• hoity-toitiest
• more hoity-toity
• most hoity-toity

Synonyms for hoity-toity

Related Words

When Should You Use Hoity-toity?

Use hoity-toity when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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