People who look down on others they consider inferior in taste, education, or social status. Individuals who display an attitude of superiority based on perceived cultural or intellectual refinement.
Originally from dialectal English meaning 'shoemaker' or 'cobbler,' the word transformed dramatically in the 18th century. At Cambridge University, 'snob' meant a townsperson (non-student), then evolved to mean someone who apes their social superiors, finally settling on its current meaning of someone who acts superior to others.
The word 'snob' has undergone one of the most remarkable semantic reversals in English - it went from describing the lowest social class to describing those who put on airs about their class. William Thackeray's 'Book of Snobs' (1848) helped cement the modern meaning, making it deliciously ironic that a word originally describing humble cobblers now describes the pretentiously refined.
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