Nowadays one rarely hears the phrase “hoity toity” except as an expression of surprise coupled with annoyance or indignation, usually uttered by a precise elderly person in condemnation of the behavior of a niece or granddaughter.
And that reflects its source, for holly at one time, some three centuries ago, described a person who indulged in hoiting, an obsolete word, but meaning “acting like a hoyden.”
The toity was added just for rhyme, as scurry to rhyme with hurry in hurry-scurry.
The variant exclamation highty-tighty arose through mispronunciation, from the same change in vowel sound that, in the seventeenth century, caused oil to be pronounced “ile”; boil, “bile”; join, “jine,” etc.
