Green’s Dictionary of Slang

arrogant, supercilious; intellectual, pretentious.

c.1790		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘The Remonstrance’ Works (1794) III 77: My pride like theirs indeed, the high-nos’d elves, Who love what’s equal only to themselves.
1845		Hereford Times 28 June 4/1: She was tall, high-nosed, complexion fair as well as her hair.
1861		Manchester Courier 21 Sept. 7/5: A marble slab joined a high-nosed gentleman [...] smashing the largest mirror.
1879		R. Kerr His Excellency the Ambassador Extraordinary I 47: It contained, as population of the masculine gender, one high-nosed earl.
1886		Leicester Chron. 9 Jan. 9/4: He [i.e. Louis XIV] was Hercules, he was Jupiter in turn [...] like him highnosed and like him bewigged.
1896		Sheffield Eve. Teleg. 14 Oct. 2/6: Gay saloons gave quarry for his sport [...] His hectoring Midas, and his high-nosed Earl.
1900		Pall Mall Gaz. 15 Mar. 2/3: The ethical system of these high-toned and high-nosed friends of the poor.
1913		Lichfield Mercury 10 Oct. 3/4: Society he dismissed contemptuously as ‘snookdom’, [...] the ‘high jinks’ of the high-nosed [...] angered him.
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 367: A lean, active, high-nosed despot.
1940		S. Longstreet Decade 152: Sort of meeting the critics, as it were. Very high nose. Art.
1945		Dundee Courier 10 Oct. 4/3: Various high-nosed elderly gentlemen in kilts.
1947–53		W. Guthrie Seeds of Man (1995) 275: Maybe he’s too busy a-blowin’ his wad on one o’ them high nosey dames, kind that ya’ve gotta cram ’er hole with a thousand-dollar bill, an’ light up a big ha’f dollar seegar in ’er ass t’ git ’er juicy, t’ git ’em warmed up fer fockin’.
1951		(con. 1940s) S. Longstreet Pedlocks (1971) 380: I don’t shive a git about the high-nosed brass.