Snob

subs. (old).—1.  A shoemaker (GROSE); spec. a journeyman cobbler (HALLIWELL).

  1808.  J. MAYNE, The Siller Gun, III. 133.

  1837.  R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, II. 220, note. The Shoemaker, born a SNOB.

  2.  (old university: then general).—An inferior: see quots.

  1822.  DE QUINCEY, Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1862), 120. Base SNOBS who would put up with a vile Brummagen substitute. Ibid. (1849), The English Mail-Coach (Wks., 1854, iv. 293). If our dress and bearing sheltered us, generally, from the suspicion of being ‘raff’ (the name at that period for ‘SNOBS’), we really were such constructively, by the place we assumed. [Note. ‘SNOBS,’ and its antithesis, ‘nobs,’ arose amongst the internal factions of shoemakers, perhaps ten years later [i.e., apparently, c. 1815]. Possibly enough, the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some assizes which happened to fix the public attention.]

  1824.  Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, s.v. SNOBS. A term applied indiscriminately to all who have not the honour of being members of the university; but in a more particular manner to the profanum vulgus, the tag-rag and bob-tail, who vegetate on the sedgy banks of Camus.

  1837.  B. DISRAELI, Henrietta Temple, VI. xviii. Of all the great distinctions in life, none perhaps is more important than that which divides mankind into the two great sections of Nobs and SNOBS.… Captain Armine was a Nob, and the poor tradesman, a SNOB.

  1840.  DICKENS, The Old Curiosity Shop, xxxviii. “Pull up, SNOBBY,” cried Mr. Chuckster, addressing himself to Kit. “You ’re wanted inside here.”… “Ask no questions, SNOBBY.”

  c. 1845.  HOOD, A Tale of a Trumpet, xxxviii.

  1855.  THACKERAY, The Newcomes, II. 177. An English SNOB, with a coat-of-arms bought yesterday.

  1863.  C. READE, Hard Cash, I. 228. Once more … a motley crew of peers and printers,… of Nobs and SNOBS; fought and scrambled … to get rich in a day.

  1870.  Figaro, 18 July. Is it more cruel for a SNOB to shoot a sea-bird in the breeding season than it is for a nob to shoot pigeons in the breeding season, thereby starving all their young?

  1878.  J. T. TROWBRIDGE, Guy Vernon, I. iv., in A Masque of Poets, 183.

  3.  (colloquial).—A toadying or blatant vulgarian: see quots. 1843 and 1861. Also as adj. with numerous derivatives: e.g., SNOBBERY. SNOBBISHNESS, and SNOBBISM; SNOBBESS; SNOBBISH, SNOBBISHLY, and SNOBBY; SNOBLING; SNOBOCRACY; SNOBOGRAPHER; and SNOBOGRAPHY.

  1843.  THACKERAY, The Irish Sketch-Book (Wks., 1879, xviii.), iii. A vulgar man in England … displays his character of SNOB by assuming as much as he can for himself, swaggering and showing off in his coarse, dull, stupid way. Ibid. (1848), The Book of Snobs, ii. He who meanly admires mean things is a SNOB—perhaps that is a safe definition of the character.

  1843.  DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit, xxvi. These lions’ heads was made for men of taste: not SNOBS.

  1859.  SMILES, Self-Help, xiii. (1860), 352. He who bullies those who are not in a position to resist, may be a SNOB, but can not be a gentleman.

  1861.  LEVER, One of Them, xxxix. Ain’t a SNOB a fellow as wants to be taken for better bred, or richer, or cleverer, or more influential than he really is?

  1863.  M. E. BRADDON, John Marchmont’s Legacy, I. ii. 42. “What a SNOB I am!” he thought, “always bragging of home.”

  1871.  J. LEIGHTON, Paris under the Commune, lxviii. 244. Is it not being free … to be no longer subjected to the oppression of SNOBS, réactionnaires, and traitors?

  1866.  CARLYLE, Reminiscences (1881), II. 189. What of SNOB ambition there might be in me, which I hope was not very much.

  1883.  The Congregationalist, May, 377. The SNOB nature comes out in strange ways.

  1884.  Pall Mall Gazette, 1 March, 4, 2. Admiral Maxse’s French guest was strongly impressed with the healthy hatred in which three things—the “quack,” the “humbug,” and the “SNOB”—are held by the Englishmen with whom he associated in England. On being asked here what a SNOB is he said, “an individual who would enjoy living in a dirty hole provided it had a fine frontage, and who is absolutely incapable of valuing moral or mental greatness unless it is first admired by big people.”

  3.  (workmen’s).—A BLACKLEG, KNOBSTICK, RAT, SCAB (q.v.).

  4.  (provincial).—Mucus; SNOT (q.v.).—HALLIWELL.

  Verb. (tailors’).—To sloven one’s work: cf. SNOBBERY.