Entry · catalog no. 1014

hincty

/ /

adjective · Harlem / South ·

✓ Verified

Snobbish, stuck-up; acting superior to your own people.

“She got that promotion and turned hincty overnight.”

Origin & Attribution

Black speech since at least the 1920s; Zora Neale Hurston glossed it as snooty in the vocabulary attached to her 1942 "Story in Harlem Slang." Sits alongside dicty and saditty in a rich family of words the community built for naming pretension from within.

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

Harlem / South ·

Spoken by

$HINCTYThe Record · cultural traction

▲

26 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

60/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

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Atlanta, GA

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Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

Story in Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston — short story with glossary · 1942

submitted

■

Dan Burley's Original Handbook of Harlem Jive — book · 1944

submitted

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