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Snob



 
 
A snob is someone who adopts the worldview of snobbery – that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth
Wealth

Wealth is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. The word is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem....
, education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, ancestry, etc. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob's personal attributes. For example, a common snobbery of the affluent is the affectation that wealth is either the cause or result of superiority, or both, and a common snobbery of the physically attractive is that beauty is paramount.

However, a form of snobbery can be adopted by someone not a part of that group; a pseudo-intellectual
Pseudointellectual

Sorry, no overview for this topic
, a celebrity worshiper, and a poor person idolizing money and the rich are types of snobs who do not base their snobbery on their personal attributes.






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A snob is someone who adopts the worldview of snobbery – that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth
Wealth

Wealth is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. The word is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem....
, education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, ancestry, etc. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob's personal attributes. For example, a common snobbery of the affluent is the affectation that wealth is either the cause or result of superiority, or both, and a common snobbery of the physically attractive is that beauty is paramount.

However, a form of snobbery can be adopted by someone not a part of that group; a pseudo-intellectual
Pseudointellectual

Sorry, no overview for this topic
, a celebrity worshiper, and a poor person idolizing money and the rich are types of snobs who do not base their snobbery on their personal attributes. Such a snob idolizes and imitates, if possible, the manners, worldview, and lifestyle
Lifestyle

Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives....
 of a classification of people to which he or she aspires, but does not yet belong, and to which he or she may never belong (wealthy, famous, intellectual, beautiful, aryan, etc).

Historical origins


Characteristically, snobs look down on people who have qualities which they regard as inferior, or flaunt their attributes which they regard as positive in order to make others seem inferior. Compare the points of view embodied in the informal and subjective categories of "highbrow
Highbrow

Used colloquially as a noun or adjective, highbrow is synonym with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture....
" and its contrasted "lowbrow
Lowbrow

Lowbrow may refer to:* Lowbrow * Low culture, a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture* Lowbrow, the original title of the pilot of the Cartoon Network series Megas XLR...
".

The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press , is a comprehensive dictionary of the English language. Two fully-bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989; as of December 2008 the dictionary's current editors have completed a quarter of the third edition....
 finds the word snab in a 1781 document with the meaning of shoemaker with a Scottish origin. The connection between "snab", also spelled "snob", and its more familiar meaning arising in England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
 fifty years later is not direct.

Though the once popular etymology of snob as a contraction of the Latin phrase sine nobilitate ("without nobility") is now discredited, a 1878 quote from the trade magazine The Tailor and Cutter admits no other interpretation: "it is the correct thing to vote a showily dressed man a snob."

It is agreed, however, that the word "snob" broke into broad public usage with William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray was an England novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satire works, particularly Vanity Fair , a panoramic portrait of English society....
's Book of Snobs, a collection of satirical sketches that appeared in the magazine Punch, published in 1848. Thackeray's definition of snob then was: "He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob". The "mean things" were the showy things of this world, like a secretaryship in the Queen's Cabinet, where Prime Ministers invariably retired as earl
Earl

Earl was the Anglo-Saxons form and jarl the Scandinavian form of a title meaning "chieftain" and referring especially to chieftains set to rule a territory in a king's stead....
s. citation needed/February 2009

"Suppose in a game of life — and it is but a twopenny game after all — you are equally eager of winning. Shall you be ashamed of your ambition, or glory in it?"
— Thackeray, "Autour de mon Chapeau", 1863

See also

  • Anti-elitism
  • Chronological snobbery
    Chronological snobbery

    Chronological snobbery is a logical fallacy describing the erroneous argument that the thinking, art, or science of an earlier time is inherently inferior when compared to that of the present....
  • Classism
    Classism

    Classism is prejudice and/or discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic class. Like all forms of prejudice and discrimination it goes both ways....
  • Emotional insecurity
  • Narcissism
    Narcissism

    Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego.The term is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus . Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo ....
  • Pedant
    Pedant

    A pedant is a person who is overly concerned with formalism and precision, or who 'makes a show of learning'. The corresponding female noun is pedantess....
  • Pride
    Pride

    Pride is, depending upon context, either a high sense of the worth of one's self and one's own, or a pleasure taken in the contemplation of these things....
  • Prima donna
    Prima donna

    Originally used in opera companies, "prima donna" is Italian language for "first lady". The term was used to designate the leading female singer in the opera company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given....
  • Queen bee (subculture)
    Queen bee (subculture)

    A queen bee is the leader of a female group, a clique's leader, usually a popular young lady. Characteristics often associated to her are a beauty, charisma, skill in manipulation, and money power....
  • School diva
    School diva

    A school diva is a popular culture reference for a well-liked or worshipped female student, whether in elementary school, middle school, or high school, who sees herself as an Alpha male....
  • Spoiled child
  • Wannabe


External links

  • : "Is there a place where one is outside all snobbish concerns—neither wanting to get in anywhere, nor needing to keep anyone else out?"


Etymologies