I had always understood this to mean the underclass, the man on the street.
In the 1980's my son had a record jacket (do you remember records?) with lyrics that used the term to mean "the upper class." I think the author had confused it with hoity toity. I saw it used recently to refer to the upper class. Has its meaning changed or has the recording simply mis-informed the younger people? The military calls that "disinformation."
Well here's a little blurb on the subject by an English professor at Washington State University. Looks as if he's written a book on common errors in English. Wonder if he'd like to come over here to Wordcraft and play with the hoi polloi?
I had never heard of this misusage either.
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
[Greek, the many : hoi, nominative pl. of ho, the ; see so- in Indo-European Roots + polloi, nominative pl. of polus, many ; see pel-1 in Indo-European Roots.] Usage Note:Hoi polloi is a borrowing of the Greek phrase hoi polloi, consisting of hoi, meaning “the” and used before a plural, and polloi, the plural of polus, “many.” In Greek hoi polloi had a special sense, “the greater number, the people, the commonalty, the masses.” This phrase has generally expressed this meaning in English since its first recorded instance, in an 1837 work by James Fenimore Cooper. Hoi polloi is sometimes incorrectly used to mean “the elite,” possibly because it is reminiscent of high and mighty or because it sounds like hoity-toity. ·Since the Greek phrase includes an article, some critics have argued that the phrase the hoi polloi is redundant. But phrases borrowed from other languages are often reanalyzed in English as single words. For example, a number of Arabic noun phrases were borrowed into English as simple nouns. The Arabic element al- means “the,” and appears in English nouns such as alcohol and alchemy. Thus, since no one would consider a phrase such as “the alcohol” to be redundant, criticizing the hoi polloi on similar grounds seems pedantic.
Trust me, you can lead a long and happy life without ever reading Social Text. "Hoity-toity" is a good example of how English words can dramatically change their meanings over time. Although today we use "hoity-toity" to mean "stuck up or snobbish, self-important, pretentious and disapproving," the original meaning of "hoity-toity" was almost exactly the opposite. When "hoity-toity" appeared as an adjective in English in the late 17th century (as "hoighty-toighty"), it meant "giddy, flighty or frolicsome." To be "hoity-toity" was to act in a silly, childish, impulsive manner, as if always on the verge of instigating a pillow-fight. The root of "hoity-toity" seems to be the obsolete verb "hoit," meaning "to indulge in mirth, to romp inelegantly," apparently related to the venerable term "hoyden," meaning "boisterous or rude girl or woman." ("Hoyden" originally applied to both men and women, and was probably derived from the Dutch "heiden," meaning "heathen.")
Now here's where the story gets really interesting. It was apparently not uncommon for prim-and-proper folks in the 18th and 19th centuries to look down their noses at "foolish" or rowdy behavior and exclaim "Hoity-toity!" with a snort of derision, much as you or I might mutter "Nitwits!" at skateboarders on a crowded sidewalk. But in a stunning display of verbal jujitsu in the late 1800s, the targets of such derision gradually began to use "hoity-toity" as shorthand for the "disapprovers" themselves (mocking their constant use of the phrase), and "hoity-toity" gradually took on its modern meaning of "haughty, huffy and pretentious."
Tinman, that evolution of hoity toity is really interesting! I surely hadn't known that. See...this is exactly why we'd like to see you hang around here more often.
If we're going to be sticklers about not using the before hoi polloi, then we ought to make sure our subject-verb concord is correct. Polloi is a plural noun in Greek. Hoi polloi are not hoity toity. And, while we're at it, Latin nouns shouldn't be used with the either. Latin had no definite or indefinite articles. We might also demand that Latin, Greek, and German words be declined for case when they are used as direct or indirect objects. Or, am I being pedantic?
