Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. of a woman, chaste [lit. image].

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 60: I’m just as good as that little tight assed chick you gonna marry.

2. smartly dressed (the image is of well-cut clothes).

1930

(con. 1917) ‘W.W. Windstaff’ ‘A Flier’s War’ in Longstreet Canvas Falcons (1970) 279: Chunky, in a long clipped sheepskin coat, pink whipcord breeches, splendid Savile Row boots, looked the tight-assed proper ace.

3. mean.

1952		J. Cleary Sundowners 207: You all think I’m a tight-arsed bastard, just because I want the money meself, instead of giving it to the kid.
1966		T. Keyes All Night Stand 68: He is the sort that is always tight-arsed with his purse-strings.
1979		Lette & Carey Puberty Blues 24: If you waited too long you were a tight-arsed prickteaser.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 156: They became a bunch of tight-assed priests and bank tellers.
1991		R. Doyle Van (1998) 617: You couldn’t be one of the nicest, soundest people ever born and suddenly become a mean, conniving, tight-arsed little cunt; not overnight.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 133: Yer tight-arsed twat. Why unt yer give the poor bastard a coin?
2000		W.T. Vollmann Royal Family 543: You tight-ass prick.
2011		Sky News 3 Oct. 🌐 As a tight-arsed Yorkshire man I like the idea of accretional wealth creation, thrifty saving.
2019		C. Hammer Silver [ebook] ‘Local bigwig. Tightarse something-or-other’.

4. repressed, self-denying, puritanical.

1960		W. Styron Set This House on Fire 425: This really grim, interior, tight-assed stuff I’d done [...] was work I really couldn’t be proud of.
1967		J. Orton Diaries (1986) 28 July 259: I hate this tight-arsed civilisation.
1969		J. Neville Love Germ 156: She knew the French were xenophobic, parochial, mercenary, small-minded, tight- arsed, mean, provincial [etc.].
1974		(con. 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 119: Maybe it wasn’t that the dolls in the church were so tight-assed.
1974		Eble Campus Sl. Oct. 4: tight-ass line – a restrictive, narrow viewpoint.
1978		A. Maupin Tales of the City (1984) 127: The last thing we need is one of those tight-assed dinosaurs stumbling in here ripped to the tits.
1981		(con. 1963) P. Conroy Lords of Discipline 178: Piss all over these tight-assed dicks.
1987		R.P. Jhabvala Three Continents (1988) 372: You should have seen him [...] making his tight-ass face like he was much too superior to notice any of those nasty smells.
1995		R. Campbell Wizard of La-La Land (1999) 110: All the thin-lipped, tight-assed eunuchs and professional virgins gloating over things that happen to people.
2000		J. Hawes Dead Long Enough 274: I spent years of my twenties [...] seriously studying, getting fucking ridiculously overeducated and tightarsed.
2003		Simon & Burns ‘Port in a Storm’ Wire ser. 2 ep. 12 [TV script] I could probably get my own people to cheat it for you. But the FBI: you know how tight-ass they are.