1927 — Wallace Thurman, "Negro Life in New York's Harlem: A Lively Picture of a Popular and Interesting Section," The Haldeman-Julius Quarterly, fall 1927:
The Renaissance is, I believe, in good Harlemese, considered more "dicty" than the Savoy. It has a more regulated and dignified clientele, and almost every night in the week the dances are sponsored by some well-known social group.
Black Harlem has a slang lingo all its own — even as has Broadway, or the underworld. It is partly out of the midtown argot factory and partly of negro descent.
Thus what passes as "high-hat" or "arty" around Times Square, becomes "dicty" by the time it passes 125th st.
1929 — Deming Seymour, "A New Yorker at Large", Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 19 September 1929:
Billy is teaching her some shuffles and "house steps," and he'll put her through some tap dances, too, to help her get the negro's careless grace into her carriage.
"She needs breaking of her dicty habits," Billy says. "She's a fine lady, and always acted fine ladies. She'll have to forget her elegant manners and learn to sit down without keeping her knees together."
Jule gets in with an underworld character named Jake Simmons, who gives him entree to doctors, lawyers, teachers and other dicty folk, and Jule makes love to Anne, "a little society b—h," who wants to buy him a new suit.
1972 — Larry Johnson, "Billie Holiday: As One Man Remembers Her," Boston Globe, 5 November 1972:
She was a person of parts, a dicty lady with not only style, elegance, and almost overwhelming beauty, yet, for all of it--all the chic, all the clothes sense, and the way she wore her hair--she remained true to her heritage, […]
There was a general pattern of increasing prosperity from its northern end, around Cermak, down to about 67th Street, where the "dicty Negroes," those who were well-off, lived.
2002 — Michael Craton, Pindling: The Life and Times of the First Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Macmillan Caribbean (2002), →ISBN, page 21:
In public Arnold presented a severe and seemly demeanor. Out of uniform he was always smartly and correctly dressed. "Formal not dandy," recalled his son. "The word used then was 'dicty' [dignified]. Very proper. Three-piece suit, tie-clip and chain. That sort of thing. Well turned out."
2002 —Barbara J. Kukla, Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1925-50, Rutgers University Press (2002), →ISBN, page 140:
"Dodger's was one of the most popular places in Newark at the time," said Celeste Jones, who often sang there. "The people from Montclair and places like that used to come on Sundays. They used to laugh and get drunk and do the same things everybody else used to do, even though they were supposed to be dicty [high class]."
2008 — Bruce Kellner, Winter Ridge: A Love Story, Mondial (2008), →ISBN, page 49:
"Me too. Maybe you'll let me hire you to take me out in a day or so. What's your name?"
His eyes slitted. "Don't laugh," he said, laughing. "Mercer — my mom's idea of somthin dicty, I guess." Then he pronounced it with the accent on the second syllable, as if it were French, "Mer-say," and giggled sheepishly. "Everybody calls me Mercy, which sounds like a girl's name if you think about it."
Adjective: "striving to seem stylish and respectable; pretentious"
Tell me, if I was to buy a car, would you envy me? … No, I'm not sayin' that you have a jealous nature, but this ad here says to buy this shiny car and be the envy of all my friends.
No, I don't usually buy such dicty readin' matter, but this headline on the outside of it caught my eye.
They came out of love but I hated them for mixing in my business. Hated them for taking care of Karen and Billy. See, I believed they were part of the system, part of the lie standing in the way of King's truth. The enemy. The ones trying to kill us. Up there in their dicty Detroit suburb living the so-called good life.
But even then there was a conservative African-American segment that accused "the Race" of getting too "dicty" — which, in the parlance of the day, meant too prissy and even bourgeois — by leaving the rural South to live like Northern white urbanites.
2008 —Krin Gabbard, Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture, Faber and Faber (2008), →ISBN, page 76:
Not for Armstrong the pretensions of "dicty" blacks who carried themselves like upper-class whites, spoke about uplift, and attended the reformed Baptist chruches.
Talking about selling candy, there was the garrulous gentleman who declared to a lady sitting next to him: "What them fellows should have had is soft drinks, stuff just off the ice. But then, they would need cups, and some sort o' dicty folks would want straws. Yep, it's hot, but I guess they'll do best with candy."
Besides there is ever so much more fun travelling third than the other classes. The folks in the first are usually very prim, dicty, and conservative, if not actually frozen; in the second, they relax considerably, and in the third no one puts on any airs, but addresses other passengers informally, and folks laugh as if they were old acquaintances.
"I've played the music in a lot of places these last 30 years, from Al Capone's roadhouse to swing joints along 52nd St. in New York, Paris night clubs, Harvard University, dicty (snooty) Washington embassies and Park Ave. salons, not to mention all of the barrel-house dives."
1957 — James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues", short story first published in 1957:
"In the meantime," I said, "you got to finish school." We had already decided that he'd have to move in with Isabel and her folks. I knew this wasn't the ideal arrangement because Isabel's folks are inclined to be dicty and they hadn't especially wanted Isabel to marry me. But I didn't know what else to do. "And we have to get you fixed up at Isabel's."
2006 — Frank S. Joseph, To Love Mercy, Mid-Atlantic Highlands (2006), →ISBN, page 160:
Jesus says, Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
What's that mean?
I think it means you shouldn't go being dicty to other people unless you're perfect yourself.
Steve asks, What's dicty?
Dicty is when you act stuck-up, like you're better than they are.
1933 — Orrin C. Evans, "In a Personal Vein", The Afro-American , 23 September 1933:
I immediately set about to erase the impression that I was a dicty. I would attend the parties without my glasses and with a rumpled cap hung carelessly on my head. But I couldn't get away from the earmarks of an earlier youth spent chasing the false concepts of social and cultural standing. I couldn't run away from the classification of "dicty."
1994 — Michelle Cliff, "Book World: 'Coffee' Steeped in Stereotypes", Washington Post, 6 January 1994:
Mama is a color-struck dicty offering her daughter skin-lighteners while trying to quash her spirit.
2002 — Persia Walker, Harlem Redux: A Novel, Simon & Schuster (2002), →ISBN, page 81:
A dicty. Yes, the McKays were dicties. But she was infatuated with them.
Rachel adored her mother, but she'd chosen Mrs. McKay as her role model. Lila McKay had been both dark and beautiful. She'd married a successful light-skinned man. She'd been cultured and gracious.