zooty

English edit

Etymology edit

zoot +‎ -y

Adjective edit

zooty (comparative more zooty, superlative most zooty)

(dated, informal) stylish, flashy, snappy.
- 1949 April 18, Dwight Martin, “City of Defeat”, in Time‎^[1], archived from the original on 21 July 2013:
  Only the silver dollar hawkers have kept up their professional spirits. They hang around street corners, clinking gleaming stacks of coins, their orthodox blue Chinese gowns topped by broad-brimmed brown fedoras that give them, from the neck up, that zooty air usually associated with Broadway characters in Li’l Abner.
- 1988 Martin A. Janis, The Joys of Aging, Dallas: Word Publishing, p. 122,^[2]
  A man of 75 may be feeling pretty frisky. Frisky enough that he starts chasing the girls of 25. He divorces his wife, buys a set of “zooty threads” as he calls them, and a zippy convertible, and has himself a big time in Las Vegas.
- 1990, Hanif Kureishi, chapter 18, in The Buddha of Suburbia, London, Boston: Faber and Faber, →ISBN, part two, page 267:
  I could see he’d become pretty zooty, little Allie. His clothes were Italian and immaculate, daring and colourful without being vulgar, and all expensive and just right: the zips fitted, the seams were straight, and the socks were perfect—you can always tell a quality dresser by the socks.
- 2002, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex, New York: Picador, Book One, “The Silver Spoon,” p. 13,^[3]
  From the tender age of twelve, my mother had been unable to start her day without the aid of at least two cups of immoderately strong, tar-black, unsweetened coffee, a taste for which she had picked up from the tugboat captains and zooty bachelors who filled the boardinghouse where she had grown up.