Definition:
: affecting superiority: haughty and patronizing
About the Word:
Hoity-toity is today used almost exclusively as an adjective, to describe a person who's got their nose stuck up in the air, but it was used solely as a noun for over a hundred years before taking on adjectivehood. It is a reduplication of the older English verb hoit, a word for which the Oxford English Dictionary provides the splendid definition of "to romp inelegantly" (and I am sorry to report that that dictionary appears to have no words which are defined as "to romp elegantly").
Example:
"What bold talk is this? You instruct me? You hoity-toity miss! You babbling baby — rattle-pated doll! I doubt if you know anything at all!" — Carolyn Wells, Ladies Home Journal, May 1921
