Meaning of hoity-toity | Babel Free

Definitions

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

Equivalents

Examples

“[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.”

CEFR level