Word Origins

*HOITY-TOITY     

This phrase has been classically used in mock indignation about someone's assumed superior importance or otherwise as an inside joke. Some three centuries ago, hoity described a person who indulged in hoiting, an obsolete word, acting like a hoyden. The toity was added just for rhyme, as scurry to rhyme with hurry in hurry-scurry. The variant, highty-tighty, arose from mispronunciation, from the same change in vowel sound that, in the seventeenth century, caused oil to be pronounced “ile”, boil as “bile”, and join as “jine.” You can thank me later.

Note: Monty Woolley, above, is perhaps a classic example of a hoity-toity character in The Man Who Came to Dinner, 1942.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)