Entry · catalog no. 1014

hincty

/ /ˈhɪŋkti/ /HINK-tee

adjective · Harlem / South · 1930s

✓ 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.

1930s

Common in Harlem jive for the conceited and standoffish

1938

Listed in Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary as "conceited, snooty"

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

Harlem / South · 1930s

Spoken by

Black America

$HINCTYThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Dormant

88 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

38/100

peak cultural energy

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

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1938

in the culture

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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