Claim: The expression "hoity-toity" comes from the French words haut toit, meaning "high roof."
Example:[Berlitz, 1982]
The expression "hoity-toity," for "pretentious," comes from the French hauttoit — high roof — from which the pretentious looked down on the literally "lower" classes.
Origins: In common speech, "hoity-toity" is an adjective used
with disdain to refer to the pretentious, those who put on a show of pretending to possess refinement and sophistication (similar to "highfalutin"). So, some people naturally assume that such an unusual expression, referring to the cultured (even if they are falsely so), must itself have a cultured origin — in this case a French-language reference to the upper class.
"Hoity-toity" has nothing to do with French (or the French), however. The expression comes from our penchant for creating rhyming phrases such as "loosey-goosey" or "helter-skelter," and in this case its base is "hoit," a 16th century verb whose meaning is "to play the fool" or "to indulge in riotous and noisy mirth." ("Hoity-toity" was more commonly used to describe those who engaged in thoughtlessly silly or frivolous behavior before it became more of a synonym for "pretentious.") Attempts to find the word "haughty" an ancestor of "hoity-toity" are equally specious.
Last updated: 9 July 2007
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