Definition of "hauteur"

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

[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

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