Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Self-important or self-indulgent, especially when describing an artistic project.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Oh, and we may also need to take into account those arty-farty designers using Macs.

    EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Google Chrome OS 2009

  • In the old Soviet days, the Samizdat used to talk of ‘kitsch’ (not the arty-farty kind), a sort of gloying jelly you had to fumble with in dealing, day-to-day with the vile nomenclature foisting its mix of ludicrous ideology, lying targets and statistics, propaganda and vicious impersonal control on all and sundry.

    New Financial Year – Now We Can Arrest Again « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG Inspector Gadget 2010

  • Less historical than hysterical, "The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project" is a movie-within-a-movie shot in frequently abstract black-and-white — "arty-farty," as one character describes her cinematic preference — about a lonely office worker's effort to make a short film with the help of a more established director (the film's actual director, Srinivas Sunderrajan).

    Kids Take Over the School Steve Dollar 2010

  • The ones they're keeping are the ones that benefit business, while cutting the arty-farty ones that cost very little and arguably earn money.

    Armando Iannucci: 'Now is not the time for a crap opposition' Stuart Jeffries 2010

  • Triple Ecstacy is a remarkable example of an arty-farty porno film that actually succeeds in the arty part.

    Triple Ecstasy (DVD Review) « Skid Roche 2008

  • You're right, it won't be over until the fat lady sings, but even that won't satisfy the liberal arty-farty literati.

    Tony Blair: The Next Labour Prime Minister? 2010

  • You're right, it won't be over until the fat lady sings, but even that won't satisfy the liberal arty-farty literati.

    Tony Blair: The Next Labour Prime Minister? 2010

  • We are talking about the sinister path here, not some “white light” arty-farty mumbo-jumbo.

    Satanism Exposed: The ONA Fake Org | Disinformation 2008

  • And we've all been agonizing for the past week about whether or not a weird political mutation called Nick Griffin is really Public Enemy Number One, having been ordained as such by the multi-culti, metrosexual, arty-farty literati and Auntie Beeb's Lord High Inquisitor David Dumblebollocks, because Griffin insists that a tribe known as the English still actually exists in England and is worthy of representation in Parliament.

    John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting... 2009

  • If not because it sounds very arty-farty, then because out of slight embarrassment that I'm "only" a border guard.

    Across the Border James Gurney 2009

Comments

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  • Ten dozen brash unfinished cheap

    concrete and warped pine cantilevered lumps

    of arty-farty blocks and knick-knack shops

    await completion...

    - Peter Reading, Travelogue, from Nothing for Anyone, 1977

    June 26, 2008

  • I think he must mean artsy-fartsy.

    yarb: with just a little extra effort you could be reading Reading in Reading.

    June 26, 2008

  • Yes, we say artsy-fartsy too, you know, when we're feeling all hoity-toity.

    June 26, 2008

  • It was arty-farty when I were a lad. In fact artsy-fartsy doesn't sound right to me.

    I have in fact spent a short time reading Reading in Reading - at Reading railway station in 1997, to be precise.

    June 26, 2008