High-and-mightiness, Your

   This mock title occurs in Arthur Hailey’s Hotel. It is used by an American hotel employee to a British duchess, who would normally be entitled to be called ‘your Grace’. The speaker is in a position to blackmail the woman concerned and does not need to be polite. The mock title is based on the phrase ‘high and mighty’. This has been used of arrogant persons and actions since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The existence of the title ‘your Highness’ was also presumably an influence; one might otherwise have expected the phrase to have been converted into a nonce name such as ‘Madam High-and-Mighty’. ‘Mr High-and-Mighty’ occurs in The Taste of Too Much, by Clifford Hanley, where a woman first of all says: ‘This is a good Catholic house an’ if we want to sing good Catholic songs we’ll bloody well sing good Catholic songs, we don’t need your high an‘mighty permission.’ She continues: ‘I know what Mr High and Mighty thinks of me’ and a moment later addresses ‘Mr High and Mighty Haddow in his High and Mighty Corporation house.’ Earlier in the novel a different speaker says: ‘Of course, you know everything, high and mighty.’ In earlier times, e.g. in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ‘most high and mighty prince’, or whatever, would have been a genuine title of dignity.