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Example: [Berlitz, 1982] The expression hoity-toity, for pretentious, comes from the French haut toit — high roof — from which the pretentious looked down on the literally lower classes. Origins: In common English 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, must itself have a cultured origin — in this case a French-language reference to the (literal) upper class, people who looked down upon others from atop their high roofs (i.e., haut toit). 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, an obsolete 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 to be an ancestor of hoity-toity are equally specious.
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