dictyn.adj.

1916 C. J. Walker Let. 15 Dec. in D. L. Baldwin Chicago’s New Negroes (2007) ii. 75 You should have seen the dictey who did not notice the washerwoman [sic] falling on their faces to see her.

1920 Negro World 13 Mar. 4/2 There are 400 people in Boston who call themselves the aristocracy of the Negro race, in other words, they call themselves ‘The Dickties’. ‘We are the dickties,’ they say, and ‘We are far removed from the mass of the Negro race.’

1927 R. Fisher in McClure's Mag. Dec. 64/2 These ‘bad’ Negros linger yet, spending their heritage on each other, on dickties, the high-toned hated ones, or on 'fays, the indiscreet whites.

1945 St. C. Drake & H. R. Cayton Black Metropolis xviii. 521 People with slight education, small incomes, and few of the social graces are always referring to the more affluent and successful as ‘dicties’, ‘stuck-ups’, ‘muckti-mucks’, ‘high-toned folks’, ‘tony people’.

2001 D. Kendrick Why Woman is singing on Corner 23 All the dicktees, the high-fulutin colored couples, coming to call.

1920 Negro World 18 Dec. in R. A. Hill Marcus Garvey & Universal Negro Improvem. Assoc. Papers (1984) III. 509 If these big Negroes and dickty Negroes knew what I do, they would come into this movement now.

1926 C. Van Vechten Nigger Heaven 12 ‘Winter Palace?’ she inquired... ‘Naw..too many ofays and jig-chasers.’ ‘Bowie Wilcox's is dicty.’ ‘Too many monks.’

1938 Recorder (Bermuda) 23 July 1/6 You can go in the grand-stand, along with your dicty folks.

1969 R. D. Pharr Bk. of Numbers (1970) i. 8 It would be a pleasure to drink up this dicty boogie's likker and then turn him down cold.

1978 E. Dupuch in J. A. Holm & A. W. Shilling Dict. Bahamian Eng. (1982) 60/2 She was a dicty lady. She use t' walk down d' road on her tiptoe an' call erryboddy ‘Precious’.

1998 B. McCaskill in K. L. Kilcup 19th-cent. Amer. Women Writers ix. 171 Hopkins's story-within-a-story cheekily unfolds in the dictiest, most pretentious of religious institutions.

1932 Times Herald (Olean, N.Y.) 1 Aug. 12 Harlem's reigning sheik is Cab Calloway... His dicty clothes in zebra patterns set the style pace for ebony swells along Lenox Avenue.

1947 S. H. Adams Banner by Wayside 215 She noted that her costume, for all its ribbons, was fustian; by no means dicty enough for so elegant an occasion.

1961 New Yorker 28 Oct. 167 Barring a few dicty arpeggios and ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ screeches, it is mainly a series of extremely affecting blues phrases.

a1994 R. Ellison Juneteenth (1999) xiii. 257 Lawns and houses gave way to buildings in which fancy dicty dummies dressed in fine new clothes showed behind wide panes of shop-window glass.