Is “hoity toity” still a phrase that people use? If not, it means haughty or snobbish.
I encountered someone like this over the weekend. It was really strange. The guy short, like a midget. I don’t know how tall you have to be to be a midget, but he was super short.
Now his brain was super big. You could really tell that this man READS. His knowledge was broad. He dropped all these references, spanning 700 years. I was super impressed with this.
I used to write about this all the time. How I’m attracted to the oddity. So I was attracted to this man but I was also repelled.
I was repelled because I could tell he thought the people he was speaking to, were beneath him. We hadn’t read what he’d read so it’s a big ol’ bother to try to get to even begin to grasp concepts that dance ’round in his nimble mind.
I would not disagree with the man on that front, but! But while he was reading, I was doing this, and she was doing that and he was doing this other….
For example, has this man ever given birth? That right there should make my point.
Saturn in Sagittarius is going to rein people like this in. Are you one of them?
I’m definitely not hoity-toity but I do have a breadth of knowledge others don’t. I have only come to realize how broad and how deep that is in the last, maybe, 6 months. I always want to help and teach and so I’m probably constantly explaining stuff, maybe when people don’t care (smacks forehead) but also have a massive disconnect because i don’t have any popular culture stuck into my head and so I know that the knowledge I have comes at a cost of other knowledge and connection to others.
I write here because I had a weird/funny interaction the other week. A salesman came to our office to sell me a range of things. We need some of that range for our business. OK this is just fine. But I”m on the east coast and they JUDGE you based upon education here, in ways I am so not used to. This guy kept using bigger and bigger words, almost like he was playing a game of “can she keep up” it was awkward but I seem to have a lot of “fish out of water” experiences here. I never realized how different and how egalitairan or nordic my mind-set and culture is where I’m from until I’m outside of it but still in the US.
A tangential comment only 😉
i like that word, “hoity toity” because i read ALOT, or used to. Not so much now, but i didnt realize people were offended if i used those words. I love learning stuff, and it seems to merge into my persona, over the years. It’s as if all that reading/understanding/knowledge has become part of me. I didnt realize, until i became more aware to rein it in, because others may not read what i read. I dont read encyclopedias or stuff like that, more historical novels/mysteries, regencies ect.
oh and over time, i’ve become “distant” to people because of the knowledge, stuff i’ve learned. so, those close to me, kind of are similar to me in many ways. To keep a distance is so i dont offend (incompatible as well)
lol Awesome! I think I know what you mean. I have met certain people like that, too. Reminds me of a car wreck: fascinating, repelling, yet you can’t look away.
Something always has a way of shoving stuff in my face when I think I start acting too arrogant or feeling sorry for myself. It puts me back in my place. It’s been going on all my life, so I try to check myself before I wreck myself.
But yes, I know and have known people like this. I don’t like to gloat when they fall. That’s their own personal trip.
My step sister has never stopped going to college. She loves to learn and she decided long ago to follow that path instead of getting married and having children. She applies what she has learned to her work and she makes more money than god…and I am proud of her. This has been her thing, its her journey and she is happy….but….
It’s hard for her to socialize with people without being the speaker at a back yard bbq. I am impressed with all she has learned and love her mind but to other people she is a know it all and a conversation hog. People don’t like her and she is isolated because of the way she turns into a guest speaker at Thanksgiving dinner.
While she is well educated, a top earner (she works at the pentagon) and is on top of the world she is very lonely at times too.
I don’t think she always realizes she is doing it. And I don’t want to hurt her feelings. But, you can see people move away from the know it all in the room. I don’t think she is arrogant about it, but other people see it as arrogance and hoity-toity better than you ….. if they knew her they would realize she is just a big ol’ nerd that loves knowledge so much and she tries to share….
I could listen to her for hours. What she knows about politics is amazing. Problem is no one else will let her stand center stage and speak for hours on end about everything she has learned. I have always hoped she would find some balance but I don’t think its going to happen any time soon…..
That’s an interesting point of view, soup. I should consider that and at least keep that in mind when I meet some people.
Have you ever wondered if she actually DOESNT’T CARE about it? That she’s nice being alone? That the way she likes to socialize is talking about what she knows, and she actually feels an imense pleasure in teaching people? You even said that you don’t even know if she “realizes” it. Maybe she’s more aware of what SHE likes than you.
I dont really know much to go on talking abt complicated stuff with people around parties, but I DO KNOW that I give zero f*cks when I hear someone say to me “you have no friends, you’re lonely, you can’t socialize”. I’m completely ok with, I’d rather spend my time alone at home watching game of thrones and reading astrology blogs than faking that I care for strangers at parties. The feeling I got from your comment is that she actually enjoys sharing the knowledge and she’s fine that it’s her way of socializing. She doesn’t sound like a hoity toity.
I think soup was just observing that others view her as hoity toity. Soup herself says she enjoys listening to her and likes her very much.
betty sky…
Go back and read it over ….that is my SISTER…I don’t just like her I LOVE HER. And I thought I was very clear about this.
I said OTHER PEOPLE….not me. She is my sister, and I love her. Please read correctly before blasting me.
dog8818…. you get it!!!!!!! Thank you!!!
Also, she would never say something like ‘zero fucks’ …she is a 57 year old educated class act and that is just not her style.
Anyway, it was an observation. I was speaking of my sister who I admire and adore. My sister who has communicated to me more than once that she is lonely.
I on the other hand will get raunchy and say things like *zero fucks* which is about how many fucks I give when being attacked on the internet by someone who didn’t comprehend what they read.
I really like the ‘guest speaker’ take. It puts it in perspective for me. I don’t mind people over extemporizing unless they are mind controllers who expect the buy on. And it is always interesting to watch the responses of others to them. It says alot.
My husband calls *everyone* in our home state stupid hillbillies. He says they have no knowledge of how the real world works and they’re *all*…okay… *most* he says, racist..illiterate, etc. This is his excuse for not moving back there. Haha. What does it tell me? Massive insecurity.
Are we married to the same man lol. Sorry jk. ((PIseas))
I simply don’t get it. I can honestly say I know quite a bit on many subjects. But I also tend to surprise people I’ve known for quite a while when I show knowledge in things they didn’t have an idea I knew about. What’s the motivation of putting people down, instead of putting them in ease in social situations? Or yes, I can understand some people do get some kind of psychological satisfaction out of it, but as a Libran, I simply don’t feel it’s enjoyable or necessarily.
i actually think my acceptance of people is actually misconstrued as snobbiness sometimes. I do have a lot of personal pride and I think that gets misconstrued too. I just came to a point in my life where I couldn’t make myself smaller or less intelligent because it would make others feel bad. That’s on them now. And they can think what they want. Those who know me know I’m elevated but I try to bring others up if they want. And I want to learn from them! But I don’t worship any human. Nonono.
Libra noir, I totally understand where you are coming from re this — “I just came to a point in my life where I couldn’t make myself smaller or less intelligent because it would make others feel bad. That’s on them now.”
I know some stuff, other things I don’t know. I find I can learn great things from anyone, and I don’t put people down as that is utterly rude. I get annoyed with intellectual show-offs who make others uncomfortable, because I feel that they’re showing the potential downside of education and also they’ve missed the basics on living in a community and giving back (so, how smart are they?). I respect a person with top degrees, I respect someone w no degrees but massive common sense, I respect someone who lives from their heart and senses. Value in all.
BUT I am tired of having to “play dumb” at work etc because others may not be skilled or keep up. As in, the task is failing and we can save it, so I am not going to play dumb to spare your social snowflake feelings anymore, though I am not going to come off like a show-off. Quietly working and living with skills offends some people. Our dept was told our brains “offended” others and made them feel stupid, even as they handed us their work to do as they couldn’t handle it. We had to creep around and “play dumb” while doing all the work — nope, never again.
I like people who read a lot and have vast reservoirs of knowledge and who like to share that knowledge because they are excited about it. I am also repelled by people who use knowledge as self-worth or status.
i think people either think i’m an idiot or really smart and aloof. it could go both ways. i definitely don’t wow people with my book knowledge even though i have a lot of degrees and have read a lot of things. For the most part, i feel like the biggest idiot in the world who occasionally knows stuff. i have saturn in gemini opposite my sag sun/neptune. i also have jupiter, venus and mercury in sag. so i love learning, but i don’t do well with information. i’ve had a variety of life experiences and i learn from them, but i don’t really retain the details. and then every so often i speak as if channeling a higher wisdom. it just comes out. its stuff that i know based on previous experience or something i’ve read or heard, and i’m definitely putting it all together myself in my mind, but it comes out in what seems like a perfectly magically synthesized assessment of something, almost poetic, and is often followed by an awkward silence. it’s a little weird and i think it catches people off guard. my strategy in life has been to pretend i don’t notice and not to attempt to define myself by it. i quickly go back to being the idiot who doesn’t know popular culture references or important historical or political things, the klutz that interacts with the world in a way that seems silly or oddly idiosyncratic. i guess i see myself more as a spacey dreamer wanderer who is currently–magically, it seems–working on a phd. i think do alienate people, though, but i attribute this more to my aquarius moon–i just don’t get people and emotion sometimes!–along with saturn in the 11th. I have an awkward saturn-jupiter thing going on (my descendant is also saturn ruled capricorn, mars and MC in pisces), so i’m an oddly cheery people person who is also a rule-bound introvert. Its a lot to balance.
Wow, wouldn’t this be great?!
I don’t mean about reining in the midgets necessarily (it’s a huge problem) but being the youngest (and dumbest) I should probably be bald from my siblings patting me on the head all these years. I don’t guess it’s the same thing as being hoity toity but I do feel the condescention.
I’d like to think that I’m not one of them. It would pain me to think I had made someone feel insecure or “less-than” or that I was talking down to them.
It’s interesting that you should post this today because I was studying someone’s natal chart last night that does this very same thing. Other than a very tight sun/mars conjunction that is opposed by Jupiter, I see she also has an unaspected (no major aspects, only an inconjunct to Neptune) mercury in aries.
She’s a “pickle” to put it nicely. She also was diagnosed by a doctor with a mental illness (and also a personality disorder) and has remained untreated for decades.
Some people will always feel less than others, no matter what. There will always be the ones who likes to victimize themselves.
I remember I wasnt the brightest student. I kept telling myself “I could do better, but I’m happy with the results”. There would always be some other student with terrible grades who would feel bad abt MY grades, feel insecure and less-than, like you said (and they wanted ME to feel guilty for being better than them). But their issues were never my problem, I would never feel bad abt being “better” than them (like if I was doing a whole lotta effort so I could have the pleasure of getting higher grades lol). There are many other life situations in which you can think abt similar results. Going to work wearing makeup everyday can make your female co-workers CRAZY, but thats not my problem.
You should never make yourself lesser than others so they don’t feel bad. What a sin! lol
@PIseas314: … massive insecurity.
Totally agree!!!
Intellectual Insecurity.
Capital EYE’s… I suppose it has its benefits.
I tend to keep my intelligence to myself. In my life, I have had quite a few men try to show me how smart or tough they are. It is really quite amusing. Entertaining. I smile. I nod. I laugh. My Moon in Capricorn gives me great timing.
Shit. I’m beginning to sound like those fuckers.
Shoot me, now!!!
ps. When ever someone says “hoity-toity”, I picture the individual drinking tea with a face that shows that they swallowed something that did not agree with them. Oh. And they have that little pinky finger thing going.
lol i use the word to describe someone. I like that word. It feels just “right” to describe snobbishness. 😀
“Oh she’s so hoity toity, it’s hilarious.” I guess i enjoy the image, it brings richness into a very strong imagination — a woman in high society, watching the races, (kind of like the movie, “My Fair Lady” and she has to become this type of woman, but fails miserably for awhile. and when she does become one, she is excellent at it. but her heart and soul is Always the ignorant, sweet, poor girl).
My eldest daughter has, for all intents and purposes, a photographic memory. She reads things one time and that’s it, it’s in her head. She does very well in school, she was self taught with music (now she plays in the band). I would tell you her other accomplishments but it would sound too much like bragging.
But she also has Aspergers. My family, for the longest time, thought she was like this, this ‘highly-toighty’ type, or too much of a know-it-all. They would tell me the things they overheard her saying and how she said them, and expect me to chastise and over apologize for her comments, but…she has Asperger’s! She is a genius but fails miserably socially! She has no concept of picking up on the subtleties of body language.
Maybe this man didn’t realize he was coming across that way…maybe he has something like Asperger’s as well.
I’ve never been repulsed by a female in my entire life until I met my Scorpio-MC/Mars co-worker. She will judge you based on the clothes that you wear, your educational background, your financial standing….OMG. She also thinks she is better and above everyone and everyone is below her. To make matters worse, she likes to put people down on a daily basis. It makes me thankful for my humanitarian Leo Sun on the 11th. I don’t look down on people. There’s always going to be someone better than you no matter what you do. I’ve been an underdog myself. It’s repulsive for a person to have little regard or compassion for others.
My son turns 20 next month, he attends college on a full ride scholarship and finally started working part time at the office of his major. He has also gone back and forth to Europe for his exchange program. Needless to say, he is very bright.
Saturn is transiting my 5th house and squaring my 2nd house Uranus. My son has borrowed money from me at an alarming rate, and has been squandering it on frivolous items despite the fact I explain to him the money had been earmarked for my rent. He has been acting like a spoiled brat, exploiting my feelings of guilt for raising him alone as a single improvershed mother. I was abandoned by my own father and have some personal insecurities because of it. I always wished for my son to feel nurtured and loved.
So, in his “Hoity Toity” attitude, he refers to himself as “completely independent” despite me paying his cell phone bill
and monetary aid whenever asked. I sort of created a monster, but
I try to focus on all his positive accomplishments instead. I think a “Hoity Toity” attitude is extremely annoying but it can in
fact benefit a person who adopts it as a survival of the fittest
method of making sure everyone else knows they look out for number
one. Otherwise you get treated like a doormat and that’s why
they say that nice guys finish last.
Too bad saturn is going back to scorpio
I don’t mind 🙂
Sherry, I feel your pain about your son!! Mine’s 18 and pulls the same kind of guilt trip about me not being able to afford his every whim … why do I feel guilty for saying “GET A JOB?”
Anyway, about intellectual snobbery, my feeling is that people are fine if they want to have an opinion, it’s when they drone on and become completely UNAWARE that everyone in the room is sloooowly stepping away from them because no one likes to realize that they’ll never get a word in edgewise or that their opinion will be ignored. Social etiquette is a back-and-forth kinda thing, give and take… and when people feel intellectually ABOVE those rules, then society shuns them. My daughter, who has a Ph.D. in psychology talks about this problem. She knows that she’s aware of her attitude when people say really stoooopid things, and she has to force herself to shut up and not give opinions because she sounds like a professor when she argues a point. She sounds like that even to me, but I can look past it because I know her history and that she really wants to be accepted– but most people don’t give that kinda benefit of the doubt, if you’re ignoring all the social cues. I guess at that point I think they WANT to drive people away, a kind-of reverse way of being “right” about the fact that no one is their intellectual equal, so therefore they of course are all alone in this world. Blech.
bingo!!!!
Everybody knows everything 🙂
They certainly think they do. Still, we are all here looking for answers ….because we don’t know everything….
I love this comment!!!! 🙂 everybody knows everything 🙂
That’s funny. The great thing about books is that they can say whatever you want them to.
Knowledge does not equate with equality or inequality that is an illusion. Its a misconception or lie because it is relative. You can have all the knowledge in the world and the other doesn’t have what you have in knowledge but makes up for it in relationships. Does that make either of you one over the other? Obviously not. Its a perception. When they say knowledge is power that is something can be true because knowledge can lead you to power with the purse or with a group etc. But it won’t really make you equal because at the end of the day we deal with the uncertainty of death and you can’t take anything you have with you but your consciousness , beliefs, and relationships that you have made.
i like that, that knowledge is nothing to do with equality/inequality. We all have access (if you don’t live in a 3rd world) to education if we seek it. It’s free will. Of course, sadly not everyone can afford it, but there’s Always plenty of free courses you can take and also if one can afford it, maybe take out a small loan for education, and pay it back slowly while working.
When I read the description of the little man, I immediately pictured the obnoxious but somehow endearing little tyrant “Beverly Leslie” on “Will & Grace” — and also the unforgettable “Hyacinth Bucket” (“pronounced Boo-kay!”) on great old Brit-com, “Keeping up Appearances.”
The truly “well-born” / “well-educated” never talk down to others, only strive to uplift. Noblesse Oblige.
Sounds like lack of social sense. Communication 101: know your audience.
Yep
I am continually reminded lately of a story the church lady told me. She also does some bible study. She was telling me this thing, I don’t know if it’s true, her claim. Supposedly there is a bible thing where there is this event and the Jesus is preaching and he talks about the women who are listening to him and then there are the women who are slingin the hash and bussing the tables, taking care of the physical needs. He terms those listening to him as the Marys and those working, as the Marthas. He says the Marys are superior to the Marthas. Here’s the kicker. He says the Marys are superior to the Marthas. And what I found funny is that church lady said she is a Martha. And she never can forgive Jesus for saying what he did. I guess the whole preaching thing brought it up yet again. And the question would be, whose your Jesus?
In a sermon I heard on this years ago, the rector said that the Marthas went overboard, laboring to create an unnecessarily ostentatious spread when a simple supper was all that was needed. Thus they were too busy to listen to him intently (as the Marys did), which was the whole point of the event.
@notch&warped, wow, i never heard of that before, that the women considered themselves the “martha’s” and got upset at Jesus ever since.
One woman. I haven’t heard of it since. Probably why it struck me as funny.
@notch. oh ok. lol i was also combining warp’s “marthas” 😀
I must admit. I like a good spread of food. Those distracting marthas.