Seditty, Saddity

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Femby Ford. I’m calling from Los Angeles.

And I have a question about a word.

I know it’s a part of Black English or African American English or maybe Southern English.

But the word is Fadity.

If I had to guess how to spell it, it would be S-A-D-I-T-T-Y.

-huh.

And it means someone who thinks that they’re better than others, maybe someone who puts on airs.

And another way of saying it is high-sididdy.

You can call somebody high-sididdy.

And I’ve always wondered where that word came from because it doesn’t sound anything like anything, like any synonym for it to me.

Yeah, that’s a really good question.

And so did you grow up with this word?

Yes. I grew up with this word, but it was something that people in the generation above me would use more.

I think that my grandmother would know that word, but also people in my generation use it as well.

But it was not a slang type of word. It was more of a grown folks word.

Gotcha. And so it’s an African-American word from way back, right? This is how you know it?

Yes.

Were your grandmother’s people from the South?

Yes.

Okay. On all this, everything that you’re saying is making 100% sense to me and Martha. This is how we know it as well.

We know it from our callers and from our listeners.

We’ve talked to people about this word before.

And also, all of the reference works that I have, everything you’re saying is 100% down the line.

Here’s what we know. The first use that we have of it in print is from 1948.

It does appear in all of the works of African-American English that I have in one way or another.

The spelling that you gave is one of the common spellings, S-A-D-I-T-T-Y, S-E-D-I-T-T-Y, sometimes S-I-D-I-T-T-Y, to put on airs, to act better than your raisin, to be stuck up.

Yeah, to be stuck.

Sometimes it means to act white,

Especially when you’re with black people,

To act like you’re not part of the community that you’re actually in.

And where it comes from is the real question.

And, of course, this is always the problem with language,

Always the problem,

Even with some of our most mainstream words we don’t know.

And then when you get to language that belongs to a smaller community,

It’s even harder.

The theory that I like for Zididdi right now

Connects directly to the first in-print use that we know.

Bonnie Taylor Blake, I believe, found this first use from 1948.

And it’s describing a group of young African-American women working together.

And what it says is they’re all talking about working together

And about being ladies and being cultivated.

And it says, as frequently stated by them, to be more sedity.

And it’s in quotes and in parentheses right after it, it says sedate, S-E-D-A-T-E.

And that particular parenthetical reference and some other uses in print that I’ve seen on my own

When I’ve been looking for this word and trying to prove its existence over time in different environments

Makes me think that what we’re looking at here is a mock fancy pronunciation of the word sedate.

In the same way that people do this mock fancy pronunciation of tarjet for target.

It’s a joking way of saying sedate, sedate.

Wow.

That’s what I’m thinking.

And it just somehow kind of became permanently ensconced in language.

I always talk about things being ensconced in language.

And it just kind of stuck.

Now, I don’t know that that’s for sure, but there’s an air to it.

There’s a feeling to it.

That’s a good lead, yeah.

Yeah, it’s a lead.

And I’m not going to say that this is for sure the thing.

Other people have suggested maybe Siddhiti is a corruption of Saturday.

It might be about the way that you look and feel when you dress up in your best clothes.

When you’re going out for Saturday night, you get your hair done.

You put on your best clothes.

You shine your shoes.

You got a little spending money in your pocket.

You go to the nice restaurant.

You go to the nice club.

You polish the car.

One thing I always did think of is that I always compared it to the word bougie.

Because the way that bougie is a corruption of bourgeoisie, I figured sedate must be a corruption of something.

But I could not think of a word that it could be a corruption of.

So, you know, that makes sense.

It could.

Now, you might say sedate is just about being calm, right?

But it isn’t.

And particularly in the context of this.

But it’s not.

That’s not even the word you’d use if you really wanted to.

Sedate is, particularly in the context of this one particular 1948 citation, to be sedate is to be, how shall I put this?

To be restrained and to be less than yourself, to be what the larger culture wants you to be, which is to not be your true self, to not express your normal culture, to not be who you really are, to be what the white people want you to be.

That’s kind of what they’re talking about in this larger quotation here.

So I don’t really know for sure because I wasn’t there at the time.

I didn’t write this, and I’m just reading this secondhand many years later.

So I don’t really know.

That makes sense.

But that’s my guess.

There’s just so many layers to this one word about how one presents oneself.

You’ve set my reading course for me for a while here.

I think I’ve got some reading to do.

Well, me too.

Now I’m like, okay, yeah, Janina Smitherman.

Because I have a bunch of her books on my, you know how you kind of cue books up,

And then it’s like, well, one day I’ll get to it.

Now it’s like, okay.

Yes.

Yeah, every bookshelf in my house, yes.

It’s filling over onto other people’s bookshelves now.

Hey, Simby, thank you so much for calling.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

It’s been so fantastic.

Take care.

All right.

Bye-bye.

All right, you too.

Bye.

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