snob

[snob] /snɒb/
noun
1.
a person who imitates, cultivates, or slavishly admires social superiors and is condescending or overbearing to others.
2.
a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field:
a musical snob.
Origin
1775-85; orig. uncert; first used as a nickname for a cobbler or cobbler's apprentice, hence a townsman, someone of low class or lacking good breeding, commoner, hence someone who imitates persons of higher rank
Related forms
antisnob, noun
Examples from the web for snob
  • While the wine snob is largely an invention that eases societal discomfort, the wine bore is in fact a real problem.
  • She speaks with an aristocratic intonation, but is no snob.
  • He was a snob who fawned on royalty and admired fascism.
  • Yesterday the automakers were too busy making money and too snob to take a look at alternative ways coming for outside.
  • But ignorance is not a virtue, nor is knowledge the equivalent of being a snob.
  • The exorbitant snob wine is one of the more laughable manifestations.
  • Still, precision counts, especially if you're a tea snob.
  • Playing with words indeed, and a good-natured game of one snob openly trying to out-snob another.
  • The highly illogical car market is not only unduly influenced by style, it is also beholden to the vagaries of snob appeal.
  • His profile is so witty and kind of intellectual snob yet charming and sweet.
British Dictionary definitions for snob

snob

/snɒb/
noun
1.
  1. a person who strives to associate with those of higher social status and who behaves condescendingly to others Compare inverted snob
  2. (as modifier): snob appeal
2.
a person having similar pretensions with regard to his tastes, etc: an intellectual snob
Derived Forms
snobbery, noun
snobbish, adjective
snobbishly, adverb
snobbishness, snobbism, noun
snobby, adjective
Word Origin
C18 (in the sense: shoemaker; hence, C19: a person who flatters those of higher station, etc): of unknown origin
Word Origin and History for snob
n.

1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c.1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste."