hotsy-totsy

English

Pronunciation

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Adjective

hotsy-totsy (comparative more hotsy-totsy, superlative most hotsy-totsy)

1. (slang) Fine, all right, good.
   • 1945, James T. Farrell, Judgment Day, The World Publishing Company, page 176:

     He and Catherine would patch it up, prosperity might now really be around the corner, it would all turn out hotsy-totsy, and Studs Lonigan would be singing in the bathtub, and singing in the rain, and singing.

   • 1972, Vance Randolph, Ozark Folklore: A Bibliography, Indiana University Research Center for the Language Sciences (1972), page 161:

     The waters made old men young, and everything was hotsy-totsy until Ouachita broke the "moral law" by killing a man who seemed likely to succeed him as chief. Then "the mountains yield molten lava," destroying Ouachita and his tribe.

   • 2001, Joseph Berger, Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust, Washington Square Press, →ISBN, page 279:

     “Joey, you're naive. You think this government is all hotsy-totsy, fair and square. But governments are not like that. […]

2. (slang, usually derogatory) Fancy, sophisticated.
   • 1952, Lester Dent, Cry at Dusk‎^[1], MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, published 2012, →ISBN:

     I could never forget his supercilious sarcasm when I walked out on the practice field of his hotsy-totsy college, and he listened to my Flats accent, and listened to me asking him with Flats words how did I go about playing the game of football for his school.

   • 1969, Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint‎^[2], Vintage International, published 1994, →ISBN:

     […] and every spring, in the fullness of their benevolence, they sent him and my mother for a hotsy-totsy free weekend in Atlantic City, to a fancy goyische hotel no less, there (along with all the other insurance agents in the Middle Atlantic states who had exceeded the A.E.S., their annual expectation of sales) to be intimidated by the desk clerk, the waiter, the bellboy, not to mention the puzzled paying guests.

   • 1996, Terry McMillan, How Stella Got Her Groove Back‎^[3], Signet, →ISBN:

     So unlike some of these hotsy-totsy movie stars athletes rappers and rock and roll stars who spend all their money on expensive cars clothes mansions and go bankrupt from excessing, I will not.

Synonyms

• (fine, good): peachy

Noun

hotsy-totsy (plural hotsy-totsies)

1. (slang) An attractive woman, especially one who is the companion of a man.
   • 1960, Walker Percy, The Moviegoer, Vintage International, published 1998, →ISBN, page 155:

     “Don't you get risque with me! This is your mother you're talking to and not one of your little hotsy-totsies.”

   • 2004, Christopher Buckley, Florence of Arabia, Random House, →ISBN, page 93:

     It's so he can fly off in a swirl of self-justification to Um-beseir and his huge bed and his Russian hotsy-totsies.

   • 2011, Ellis Avery, The Last Nude‎^[4], Riverhead Books, →ISBN:

     Instead, she had a younger, darker copy of the hotsy-totsy who had stolen away her son and ruined her life: me.