a. colloq. [pa. pple. of stick up, STICK v.1 34.] Assuming an unjustified air of superiority, or pluming oneself unduly on real superiority; offensively pretentious.
1829. Edin. Rev., L. 245. At the first sight of the Elgin Marbles, we feel that … the ancient objects of our idolatry fall into an inferior class or style of art. They are comparatively … stuck-up gods and goddesses.
1839. Dickens, Nickleby, ix. ‘He’s a nasty stuck-up monkey, that’s what I consider him,’ said Mrs. Squeers.
1844. ‘J. Slick,’ High Life N. York, II. 87. Does the stuck up varmint feel above riding with an honest Yankee, because he haint got no title?
1860. Hotten’s Slang Dict., 230. Stuck-up, ‘purse-proud’—a form of snobbishness very common in those who have risen in the world.
1861. Sala, Dutch Pict., xvi. 252. Versailles is one of the dreariest,… most stuck-up places I know.
1863. Kingsley, Water-Bab., i. 6. Tom … considered him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs.
1869. Trollope, He knew, etc., xxxv. (1878), 196. She has no stuck-up ideas about herself.
1903. Bridges, Socialist in Lond., 182 Poet. Wks. (1913), 430. The degrading pestiferous fuss Of stuck-up importance.
Hence Stuckuppishness.
1853. Chamb. Jrnl., XX. 307/2. We leave Ramsgate, then, with its ‘stuckuppishness’ and stiff and formal society, and its peculiar bathing-practices.
1875. Miss Braddon, Hostages to Fortune, I. ii. 56. Thank heaven it is not a perky modern place, all stucco and stuckupishness.
