海角大神

There are plenty of SAT-level words to describe someone who persistently quotes 鈥淧aradise Lost鈥� and likes to open the top of his or her Maserati convertible in the school pickup line. Pretentious, ostentatious, pompous, vainglorious, or grandiose might come to mind. But there are also a number of folksy, colloquial words that strike a blow against Latinate high diction, poking fun at pretension even while defining it. Let鈥檚 take a look at the wonderful highfalutin, hoity-toity, and la-di-da!

Highfalutin, meaning 鈥減retentious鈥� or 鈥渁rtificially elevated in style,鈥� was first used in the early 19th century. It was primarily spoken slang, and when people wrote it down, they had to sound it out. Even today we can鈥檛 agree on how to spell it. It is most often found without the final 鈥済,鈥� however, as befitting its colloquial tone. Adding the 鈥済鈥� risks sounding, well, highfalutin, as Victorian poet James Russell Lowell demonstrated when he described something he鈥檇 read as 鈥渘ot so highfaluting (let me dare the odious word!) as the modern style.鈥�

Its etymology is disputed. One theory holds that it comes from the Yiddish hifelufelem: 鈥渆xtravagant language; nonsense.鈥� Another contends that it derives from high-flown. British broadcaster Melvyn Bragg argues creatively, but probably wrongly, that it embodies the class divisions found on 19th-century American steamboats: 鈥淥n board the bigger boats the richer travellers were called 鈥榟ighfalutin鈥� because of the high fluted smokestacks that carried the soot and cinders well away from the passengers.鈥澛�

I had always thought that hoity-toity came from 鈥渢oit haut,鈥� French for 鈥渉igh roof.鈥� It would be poetic if this term meaning 鈥渟nobby鈥� or 鈥減retentious鈥� came from a funny, rhyming mispronunciation of French words. In fact, though, its ancestor is hoit (which also gave us hoyden), an Old English word meaning 鈥渢o romp inelegantly,鈥� as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it. Like highfalutin, hoity-toity was at first spelled any number of ways, indicating that it, too, was slang.聽

La-di-da actually is a mispronunciation, or rather a mocking imitation, of upper-class British English. Such 鈥減osh鈥� accents drop the /r/ sound in most words, so that 鈥渞oar鈥� sounds just like 鈥渞aw鈥� and 鈥渃ar鈥� like 鈥渃ah.鈥� La-di-da uses the speech patterns of the upper classes to critique their mannerisms, since it means 鈥渁ffectedly or pretentiously elegant or refined in manners or tastes.鈥� The word is usually an adjective: 鈥淭he dinner intimidated everyone with its la-di-da place setting 鈥� seven utensils, five glasses, and a finger bowl.鈥澛�

I am most familiar with it, though, as an interjection. Whenever my mother thought teenage me was putting on airs, she鈥檇 bring me back to earth with a 鈥淲ell, la-di-da!鈥�