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hoity-toity

/ˌˈhɔɪdi ˌˈtɔɪdi/
IPA guide

Someone who's hoity-toity is pretentious and snooty. If you speak to someone in a hoity-toity accent, they are going to assume that you're a snob.

Your hoity-toity aunt might refuse to eat lunch in your favorite diner, insisting on someplace fancier, and a hoity-toity salesman might make you feel like you don't belong in an expensive department store with your old jeans and worn sneakers. The adjective hoity-toity started out meaning "riotous behavior" in the 1660s. By the late 1800s it had gained its modern meaning, probably out of similarity to the word "haughty."

Definitions of hoity-toity
  1. adjective
    affectedly genteel
    pretentious
    making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction
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