snob, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

snob n.

[the class-conscious, modern use of SE snob, one who despises their inferiors and/or toadies to those seen as superior, began as Cambridge University jargon c.1793 as a description of a townsman, as opposed to a university member. This may have been based on the orig. sl. use, implying the desire of tradesmen to flatter custom out of the undergraduates. It was widely popularized through the success of William Thackeray’s Book of Snobs (1848). Ironically, a parallel use (early–mid-19C) means simply an ordinary person, with no pretensions to superiority, and in mid-19C Aus. snobs were tradesmen, while nobs were the ‘gentlemen’. Similarly, in university use snobocracy, in SE the world of the influential upper classes, meant the world of townspeople, as opposed to undergraduates – again the use returns to the orig. sl. meaning]

1. (also snobber, snobbie) a cobbler, a shoemaker; thus WWI Aus. snob-shop, the shoemender’s.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
c.1790		‘Cobler’s End’ in Holloway & Black I (1975) 58: There’s an end of poor Snob.
1800		‘Holiday Time’ in Jovial Songster 69: Little Snob, rather lame in the knees.
1816		J.H. Lewis Lectures on Art of Writing (1840) 57: How happy is a tailor’s life [...] ’Tis better than a barber’s life, A tinker’s, or a snob!
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 259: He surveyed [...] swells, butchers, dog-fanciers, grooms, donkey-boys, weavers, snobs, market-men.
1836		‘Drummer’s Stick’ in Frisky Vocalist 4: The cobbler’s wife came next, oh dear, [...] She said she did feel so queer, / Because the snob had lost his all.
1848		Dundee Courier 12 Apr. 2/6: Mr Kidd [...] is an Arbroath ‘snob’ [...] he was pretty well known by the cognomen of ‘cobbler Sam’.
c.1850		‘Suppression of Crinoline’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 148: She’s courting a snob! so help my bob.
1851		Bell’s Life in Sydney 1 Feb. 2/7: Not being a snob, tailor or harness-maker, he was incompetent to accomdate him [in a request for sewing].
1861		‘Wonderful Mr. Spurgeon’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 136: Parson, lawyer, snob, and surgeon, / From every place they run a race.
1877		Five Years’ Penal Servitude 158: Then came in the master-bootmaker, whom no uniform ever designed would have made look anything else but a regular little ‘snob.’ I do not mean a Thackerayean Snob, but a ‘cobbler.’.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 28 Dec. 1/3: A man [...] went to an inferior shoemaker for a pair of sewn boots [...] The snob made a terrible job of them, having knots and yellow stitches, in place of the small ones.
1896		Reynolds’s Newspaper (London) 15 Mar. 5/5: ‘Found, a little boy [...] who ran away from a comfortable snob-shop’.
1897		Morwell Advertiser (Vic.) 19 OPct. 2/3: The amusing, side-splitting farce entitled ‘The Susquehanna Snob Shop’.
1899		C. Rook Hooligan Nights 95: There was an old Jew snob [...] that Maggots wanted to get level wiv.
1905		L.C. Cornford Canker at the Heart 25: In the basement is a wash-house, and, in a room adjoining, the ‘snob-shop,’ a cobbler’s bench.
1909		Pinehurst Outlook (NC) 17 Apr. 11/2: A humble cobbler [...] in a little snob-shop in the Cripplegate in Edinburgh.
1916		C.J. Dennis ‘Push’ in Moods of Ginger Mick 41: An’ if yeh want a slushy, or a station overseer, / Or a tinker, or a tailor, or a snob.
1919		Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 26 Sept. 3/3: Spokey the wheelwright, Sparks the wireless operator [...] ‘snob shop’ the army boot and shoemaker shop.
1924		(con. WWI) A.G. Pretty Gloss. Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: snob-shop. An army boot repairing shop.
1925		‘Bartimeus’ ‘Great Security’ in Great Security 38: He had learned enough as a boy [...] to earn a bit extra as ship’s ‘snobbie’ or cobbler.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 42: The snobs [...] gave him a pair of boots which they assured him were of a type and quality reserved entirely for officers.
1933		M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 154: Outside in the lobby sits a frowsy old snobber who will cobble anyone’s shoes for a consideration.
1957		G. Kersh Fowlers End (2001) 255: And a snob—that’s a cobbler.

2. in generic use of sense 1, a vulgar or ostentatious individual.

1840		London Mag. Feb. 5: The very snobs, too, in the shilling gallery, / May club their pence for frolic, fun and raillery.
1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney I 122: ‘Well, gentlemen’ (there is nothing in the world that an English snob likes so much as being called a gentleman) [etc].
1859		Sl. Dict. 97: Snob, a low, vulgar person.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter I 18: Another snob came after [...] the only son of a China merchant [...] his father sold crcokery and all these sort of things.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 10 May 2/1: Supper had been put back by that little snob of a Perkins.
1891		T.B. Reed Cock House Fellsgarth 250: ‘Dangle, hold your tongue, you cad!’ ‘I shall do nothing of the kind, you snob!’ .
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 77: Snobs, the moneyless portion of society, opposite, of ‘nobs’.
1941		Perthshire Advertiser 12 July n.p. A gang of mouldy little snobs who should have been ducked in the nearest horsepond: .

3. a strike-breaker.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 1104/2: from ca. 1859; very ob.

4. (Aus./N.Z.) the last, most recalcitrant sheep to be sheared.

1956		Argus (Melbourne) 26 Apr. 4/2: ‘Snob’ is often used to describe the last sheep shorn from a pen during a day’s shearing.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 1104/2: C.20.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

In compounds

snob’s duck (n.)

a leg of mutton stuffed with sage and onions.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

snobstick (n.) [var. on or misreading of SE knobstick, a strike-breaker; ult. knobstick, a knobbed stick or cane]

1. a strike-breaker; one who refuses to join a trade union.

1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. an ostentatious dresser, thus a synonym for a social snob.

1863		Durham Chron. 27 Mar. 7/1: There was a young snobstick in Stockton /He got a new hat which he cocked on.
1886		Croydon Advertiser 2 Jan. 2/6: Mr Snobstick ‘Swell of the period’.
1924		Suburbanite Economist (Chicago) 10 Oct. 2/6: Snobstick — A slang term for snobs.

In phrases

like a snob’s cat – all piss and tantrums

a general phr. of derision or disdain.

1823

‘Jon Bee’ Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

snob-nob (n.) [nob n.² (1)]

(N.Z.) the self-appointed rural ‘aristocracy’.

1906

Truth (Wellington) 22 Sept. 6: They are fair sticklers for tone in the country districts, and the country newspaper panders to the little snob-nobs with all the might of its scissors and paste pot [DNZE].

snobshop (n.)

(N.Z.) an exclusive and expensive private school whose students are taught to consider themselves as being socially superior to state school pupils.

2003

McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 194: snobshop Exclusive private school where for large fees children are trained to regard themselves as socially superior to the public school product.

snob zoning (n.)

(US) a method of placing restrictions on specific city areas in a deliberate attempt to make it impossible for low-income families, e.g. non-white, non-middle-class families, to purchase homes there.

2003		Boston Globe 27 Oct. 🌐 ‘A nod to Nimbyism’ The battles over Massachusetts’s anti-snob zoning law — Chapter 40B — have been long and exhausting. The need for a truce is clear. But proposed compromise legislation in the House Ways and Means Committee appears stacked in favor of the not-in-my-backyard set.
2004		(con. 1969) J.J. Moakley Archive and Institute (Suffolk University Law School) [photo caption] Governor Sargent Signs Anti-Snob Zoning Law, 1969.