snob
/snɒb
/- He's a snob, a social climber and a misogynist, really a very unpleasant man.
- The nice thing about your mother is that she doesn't really care what you do, ideally, because some mothers are snobs, and that causes great problems.
- I think they are snobs and do not want to be associated with Swindon.
- They plug into portable devices and laptops, and will impress even insufferable music snobs.
- There is obvious pleasure in exposing wine snobs, even more than Literature snobs.
- What is it with music snobs only being able to appreciate good throwaway pop ten years later?
Derivatives
snobbism
- A lot of alternative music publications and websites share this weird snobbism, it's a way of establishing a little in-crowd.
- Staying here is a luxury in tourist snobbism; you become a temporary resident and those who clamber around the cobbled streets are the outsiders.
- Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.
Origin
Late 18th century (originally dialect in the sense 'cobbler'): of unknown origin; early senses conveyed a notion of ‘lower status or rank’, later denoting a person seeking to imitate those of superior social standing or wealth. Folk etymology connects the word with Latin sine nobilitate 'without nobility' but the first recorded sense has no connection with this.
There is a long-standing belief that snob has some connection with Latin sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, abbreviated to s-nob, which then became snob. It is an ingenious theory but highly unlikely, as a snob was first recorded in the late 18th century as a shoemaker or cobbler. The word soon came to be used for any person of humble status or rank—Cambridge undergraduates used the term to mean ‘someone from the town, not a member of the university’, and this in turn led to the broader sense ‘a lower-class person, or a person lacking in good breeding, or good taste’. In time the word came to describe someone who seeks to imitate or give exaggerated respect to people they perceive as superior in social standing or wealth.