hauteur

plural hauteurs

1. countableuncountableHaughtiness or arrogance; loftiness.

   Sometimes the hauteur is nothing more dire than a kind of black-mother wit.

   2014 May 28, John McWhorter, “Saint Maya”, in The New Republic, →ISSN

   4 more examples

   Who ever went into a public office, and was treated, as he is very apt to be, with the most offensive hauteur by some saucy, well-paid official, without feeling the desire to kick him rising strong within him?

   1842, Alexander Campbell, “Kickable People”, in Sketches of Life and Character, page 11

   “What's happened, young Herring?” I think for a moment he was about to draw himself up with hauteur and say he would prefer, if we didn't mind, not to discuss his private affairs, but when he was half-way up he caught Aunt Dahlia's eye and returned to position one.

   1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC

   [A]n angered motorist sounded his horn, but The Senator took no heed: not out of arrogance or hauteur but, simply, because he took no heed.

   1992, Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 31

   I imagine the Dreamward’s Hotel Manager to be an avuncular Norwegian with a rag sweater and a soothing odor of Borkum Rif about him, a guy w/o sunglasses or hauteur […]

   1997, David Foster Wallace, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Kindle edition, Little, Brown Book Group