Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) arrogant, self-opinionated; thus briggityness, arrogance.

1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 12 Mar. n.p.: brooklyn wants [...] Why Big Oliver made himself so briggity and acted so ungenerous.
[1871		Amer. Turf Register 170: Kentucky [...] July 4 [...] W.W. Abbott’s g.g. Briggity Dick].
1887		Overland Mthly n.m. 55/1: Cherrykee air er right young gal, en young gals will be briggity, whar they haint meanin' no sorter harm. They air like young colts afore ye break 'em.
1888		Pacagoula Democratic Star (MS) 20 July 4/4: Aunt Harner she snap [...] ‘Doan you heah me, you briggity niggah?’.
1896		P.L. Dunbar ‘An Ante-Bellum Sermon’ in Lyrics of Lowly Life 29: Don’t you git too brigity; / An’ don’t you git to braggin’.
1899		Union Times (Columbia, SC) 14 Apr. 3/3: The way that oldest Macgraw girl flustered around Jeems Blake was nothin’ short of outdacious [sic] briggityness.
1904		Outlook 76 612: ‘I never felt so briggity in all my life.’ [...] ‘I was just wishin’ the whole town could see us set off, and for that reason we’re goin’ right up through the square’.
1913		H. Kephart Our Southern Highlanders (1922) 94: Coaly, old boy! you-uns won’t be so feisty and brigaty atter this, will ye! [...] When I say that Doc Jones thar is brigaty among women-folks, hit means that he’s stuck on hisself and wants to show off.
1927		Carey Woofter ‘Dialect Words and Phrases from West-Central West Virginia’ in AS II:8 349: briggity (adj.), (1) a child who is too forward. [...] (2) an adult who knows the business of every one.
1940		J. Thomas Big Sandy 92: Nancy Ellen vowed it made the letter ‘A,’ or it would have if the briggity little youngins hadn’t messed it up.
1973		J. Stuart Land Beyond the River 39: Cousin Bos with his crooked hawk-bill nose and hawk eyes was in many ways a feisty, briggity and mean little man.