Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) snobbish, pompous.

1839		Spirit of the Times (N.Y.) 18 May 123/3: Them high-faluting chaps [DA].
1857		T.H. Gladstone Englishman in Kansas 43: No highfalutin’ airs here, you know.
1859		‘Timothy Titcomb’ Letters to Young People 140: If you wish to be an ‘A No. 1’ woman, you have got to ‘toe the mark,’ and be less ‘hifalutin’.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 154: HIGHFALUTEN, showy, afflicted, tinselled, affecting certain pompous or fashionable airs, stuck up.
1869		F. Whymper Travel and Adventure in Alaska 309: If a preacher, actor, or writer indulges in an exaggerated manner, they say ‘he piles on the agony’ too much, has a ‘spread-eagle’ or ‘high-falutin’ style about him.
1872		Sportsman (London) ‘Notes on News’ 23 Mar 4/1: But higf-falutin journalists and high-moral clergymen must have pegs upon which to bang their platitudes.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 266: You are ready to place confidence in every scheming villain who talks in a highfalutin strain about the things that are proper between gentlemen, and flatters your vanity to get an opportunity to pick your pocket.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 25 Apr. 7/1: Like the eagle who yielded the feather that guided the fatal arrow to its own breast, so also has Dictator Dalley by his martial move furnished a subject for a rival to step into the arena of bunkum, and wrest from him the proud title of the champion of hifalutin gab.
1890		Sporting Times 29 Mar. 1/4: It was at some high falutin’ smoking concert in the City.
1896		P.L. Dunbar ‘Deacon Jones’ Grievance’ in Lyrics of Lowly Life 84: With its dashes and its quavers / An’ its hifalutin style.
1900		Marvel XIV:351 Aug. 4: Easy, boss, [...] don’t try an’ play that high-faluting game with yours truly.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 243: Stop all this Hifalutin’ Tomfoolery.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 10 Jan. 5/1: The contract will require something more substantial than high-falutin’ guff.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘Proof of the Pudding’ in Strictly Business (1915) 249: I say no man or woman ever spouts ‘high-falutin’ talk when they go up against a real climax.
1912		R.W. Brown ‘Word-List From Western Indiana’ in DN III:viii 578: high-fallootin’ or hiki-fallootin’, adj. Unnecessarily high or formal. ‘None of your high-fallootin’ talk counts here.’.
1927		(con. 1900s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 100: Yes, you prob’ly would read ’em poetry! [...] That’s the trouble with you high-falutin’ guys.
1939		P. Hamilton To The Public Danger 75: You’d get your girl into trouble, just for the sake of your highfalutin’ principles, would you?
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 134: Ya give me the gripes, ya high-falutin’ bastards.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 164: She had a beaut figure, full and warm, with a white skin, and lately she’d got some high falutin’ idea about buying black sheets so she’d show up.
1953		I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 37: The more downandout the boobheads look, the more highfalutin’ becomes his voice.
1954		J. Steinbeck Sweet Thursday (1955) 104: I heard you’re writing a great big goddam highfalutin paper.
1962		(con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 18: You may fool these other cats with all that hifalutin red-blooded patriotic bullshit.
1975		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell and the Three-card Trick (1977) 140: He had a real highfaluting accent.
1997		D. Farson Never a Normal Man 394: This high-falutin’ response baffled him.
2000		Guardian Guide 12–18 Feb. 25: ‘Improvising’ sounds too high-falutin’.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 61: Some clustered around to admire Tameeka's shiny dress and offer their highfalutin predictions.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 341: We were incredulous towards this highfalutin guff [i.e. Madame Bovary].