Entry · catalog no. 1013
seditty
/ /
adjective · Urban North / South ·
✓ Verified
1.
Stuck-up, pretentious; acting above your raising and putting on airs — most often said of a woman.
“She too seditty to speak to anybody from the old neighborhood now.”
Origin & Attribution
Black American speech, in print in the Black press by the 1940s; the OED's earliest citation is 1948. Origin debated — possibly a fancied-up pronunciation of "sedate." Almost exclusively a Black word: alongside dicty and hincty it shows how precisely the community named class pretension.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Urban North / South ·
Spoken by
$SEDITTThe 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.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
Oxford English Dictionary, first citation for saditty — dictionary record · 1948
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceBlack press usage (Chicago Defender and others) — newspapers · 1940s
submitted
Also spelled
See also