Green’s Dictionary of Slang

earlier uses as general term of approval, now signifying affected, overdone, etc.

1840		Staffs. Gaz. 26 Dec. 4/1: Her form was too-too fair to be / Tossed rudely on life’s heavy sea.
1860		Kentish Gaz. 13 Mar. 6/4: I know too-too well that all Augustus wants is my fortune.
1882		Northampton Mercury 1 July 7/7: Oh, those too-too precious poems. Oh that too-too empty purse!
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 8 Apr. 2/1: [D]ainty tip-of-the-flnger touches of the ‘too too’ sort.
1885		Observer and Freelance (Wellington) 29 Aug. 9/1: It looks utterly too-too!
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Aug. 5/1: I sat me down and thought profound; / This maxim wise I drew, / Those suits from Summerfield and Co. / Are more than quite too-too.
1893		Manchester Eve. News 24 May 2/5: He is quite awfully too-too as a fin-de-siecle politician.
1909		T. Bracken ‘Our Pet Kangaroo’ Not Understood and Other Poems 23: But bah! I’m getting quite ‘too too,’ / I talk just like a bleating bard.
1921		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 4 May 5/5: You can [...] remark knowingly and audibly to a friend, ‘A trifle too-too; what?’.
1933		Western Dly Press 22 Dec. 12/2: [headline] Too-Too Touching tale of a Lost Pet!
1944		Hull Dly Mail 13 June 3/6: Reginald Gardener, the too-too Englishman.
1955		J. Blake letter 7 Feb. Joint (1972) 57: He’s an erstwhile member of the Eastern tootoo set.
1964		Time 7 Aug. 36: They had themselves a ball sunbathing [...] she in a bikini that was utterly tutu.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 199: mind blowing, far out [...] too[-too].
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 1021: They had adopted the Constitution [...] How very-very and too-too.
1988		(con. 1940s) C. Bram Hold Tight (1990) 180: Uptown life had simply grown too, too.
2011		J. Yardley Second Reading 94: [F]or the fastidious ladies and gentlemen of the quarterly reviews and academe—nature red in tooth and claw; haunted castles atop windswept moors; defenseless young women at the mercy of strange, obsessed men with terrible secrets; bondage, imprisonment, sexual torment and ambiguity, raging fires—are simply too too.