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Snobbish   Listen
adjective
Snobbish  adj.  Of or pertaining to a snob; characteristic of, or befitting, a snob; vulgarly pretentious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Snobbish" Quotes from Famous Books



... extremely good-looking person, even of his own sex, even a scavenger or a dustman, was almost snobbish. It was like a well-bred, well-educated Englishman's frank ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... while I don't want you, of all things in the world, ever to be snobbish, I do want you to be observant. So just take this advice from me, and let these men do your work right at the start. They expect it, and they will treat you all the better—and of course you will ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough

... foolish of you to go making a playmate of such a rough, common lad? I'm not snobbish, Steve, but I think people get on better who make friends in their own class; and if your poor father could have seen you ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... the one side, the Germans and the Austrians, the Russian Jews, the Irish and the religious pacifists; on the other side, two English glass-blowers, a French waiter, and several Americans who, because of college-education or other snobbish weakness, were suspected of tenderness for John Bull. Between these extreme factions stood the bulk of the membership, listening bewildered, trying to grope ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... only knew she was unaccountably glad because there was no malice in her mirth; had she given it thought she would have insisted that, in her heart, there no longer lurked a ghost, ignoble or otherwise, of what had once been a childishly snobbish belief in her inherent superiority. And as suddenly as she had giggled she now laughed aloud at the expression she had surprised there on his face. Again, for an instant, the very spontaneity of her swift changing mood gave the situation ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... sufferance, so to speak, as if they had not become members of the commonwealth. They were allowed to work, no doubt, and sometimes even to be overworked; but they laboured as foreigners, perhaps even more eagerly employed by the snobbish because they were foreigners and yet held in disrepute by the more fastidious because they were not truly English. That is to say, French words are still as hospitably greeted as ever before, but they are now often ranked as guests only and not as ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English

... making no mention of the Emperor, was seen by everybody to refer to him and has caused discussion ever since. While many foreign critics have done the Emperor justice, others in turn have made him out to be arrogant, snobbish, bombastic, superficial, incompetent, and insincere. To writers of this class he is always the German War Lord, ready to pounce, like a highwayman or pirate, on any unprotected person or property he may come across, regardless of treaty obligations, of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... vigor, and the wind blew showers of yellowing leaves from their drooping boughs. Towards the close of the season, on the withered grass, quite in the vicinity of those consecrated social closes, to which I am always returning with a snobbish fondness, I saw signs of the advance of the great weary army which would possess the pleasure-grounds of the town when the pleasurers had left it. Already the dead-tired, or possibly the dead-drunk, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... she lacking in the general qualities which make an individual useful and desirable as a member of a co-operative community. She did not try to "get the better of" her fellow-hosts by snatching little advantages or cleverly evading her just contributions; she was not inclined to be boring or snobbish in the way of personal reminiscence. She played a fair game of bridge, and her card-room manners were irreproachable. But wherever she came in contact with her own sex the light of battle kindled at once; her talent of arousing animosity seemed to ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... in the art of Self-Government, but by the wafting of a spirit of freedom and equality, so our despotically ruled Dependencies have ever served to damage the character of our people by feeding the habits of snobbish subservience, the admiration of wealth and rank, the corrupt survivals of the inequalities of feudalism.... Cobden writing in 1860 of our Indian Empire, put this pithy question: "Is it not just possible that we may become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... a wondrous sight seen, as that almost interminable procession through the broad thoroughfares of the city, headed by a Socialist, and centred by a King! No Royal ceremonial, overburdened with snobbish conventionalities and hypocritical parade, ever presented so splendid and imposing a sight as that concentrated mass of the actual people,—the working muscle and sinew of the land's common weal, marching in steady and triumphant order,—surging like the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... he said; "mind the steps by the staircase. This house is more crooked and old-fashioned than you would think from its snobbish exterior. There are quite a lot of odd corners in the ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... double tides; and, in virtue of his university education, had no snobbish notions about never putting his hand to manual labor. He would lay down his pen at any moment and bear a hand to lift a chest or roll a cask. Old White saw him thus multiply himself, and was so pleased that he raised his ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... The snobbish little heart of Peggy McGuire later gained some consolation, for Anastasie Galitzin emerged from her room refreshed and invigorated, and lent much grace to the dinner table, telling father and daughter something of the early life of the convalescent, exhibiting a warm friendship ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... shadowy gloom, speckled and striped with the sunlight that slips through the trestles. West Broadway, which along most of its length is straddled by the L, is a channel of odd humours. Its real name, you know, is South Fifth Avenue; but the Avenue got so snobbish it insisted on its humbler brother changing its name. Let us take it from ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... course they will come. It is short notice, but if they have other engagements they will break them," returned Mother; and though it would be as impossible for her to be vulgar or snobbish, as it would for a tall white arum lily to be either of those things, still I couldn't help feeling that her unconscious thought was: "The invitation to a couple of unknown, touring Americans, from the Duchess of Stanforth, is equivalent to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... whatsoever to Aunt Euphemia's snobbish stand in the matter of Lawford's social position. Professor Grayling had laughingly said that Euphemia chose to ignore the family's small beginnings in America. True, the English Graylings possessed a crest and a pedigree ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... loved John Temple so very profoundly that she would have married him even if he went by Smith or Jones. She had read Charlotte Temple, and she knew people by that name of great respectability; but since her marriage, she had discovered, on the same street with her, a family of Temples who were snobbish and vulgar. This put her out of conceit with her husband's name. John Temple! so almost the same as James Temple, only a few squares below. Who was to distinguish her, Mrs. Juliet St. Leger Temple, from the fat, dowdyish, over-dressed, gaudy Mrs. Temple, who wore a wig, and whose ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... had been asked whether she loved England, she would, after careful consideration, have replied truthfully, "I like England. But I dislike the English people. They are narrow and hypocritical and conceited. They are snobbish; and I hate snobs." At the time of the Boer War, beyond thinking that the British ought to win, and that they would win, and feeling a little spurt as of personal satisfaction when they did win, she had had no consciousness of her country whatsoever. As for loving it, she loved her ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... the beautiful self-sufficiency of the people; you should hear what a patronizing tone they take toward the outside world! But they have their good points; they're kind and friendly with each other; and not nearly so snobbish as the people of little places are generally pictured. Everybody that is anybody knows all the other somebodies so well, it's like one great family. My people have lived there for ages; and so everybody knows me; and half of them are ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... without confessing, is socially rehabilitated. Skim-milk in this instance has passed for cream, the prudish millionaire's wife, her honour saved for the world at large, is now revealed as a hypocrite to her astounded and snobbish husband. The curtain falls on a maze of improbabilities, with the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... have more individuality there, you get more attention, the officers are flattered by your preference for their ship, and you are not merely one of a great mob of passengers as in a crowded fast liner. The officers on a popular big and swift boat are prone to be a trifle snobbish. This is especially the case on the particular liner which for the moment stands at the top—a steamer that has broken the record, and is considered the best boat in the Atlantic service for the time being. If you get a word from the captain of such ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... "The people will never understand that," he said. "Even though the Pharisees are often very snobbish, they are the best people ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith

... were only about fifteen years of age, with what delight we read this book, and how we loved that sweet Marie for her simple grace and her affection, which all seemed so maternal. How much better we liked her than the Widow Guerin, who was so snobbish with her three lovers. And how glad we were to be present at that wedding, celebrated according to the custom in Berry from ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... my companion was bent on showing his worst side. I returned to my old thoughts of him; he was snobbish, insolent, generally detestable; but a man to be studied, and I let him talk as ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... more heavily dosed with doctrine, but then it has a treble amount of snobbish worldliness and absurd incident to tickle the palate of pious frivolity. Linda, the heroine, is still more speculative and spiritual than Laura Gay, but she has been "presented," and has more and far grander lovers; very wicked and fascinating women are introduced—even a French ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... two breaths at least she had a snobbish impulse to overlook Billy and hurry away. Billy was tall, with a face like a young Greek god—but how greet him there with the Hammond girl to see, in a checked suit, patently ready-made, with the noisiest of shirts, a flowing bright red tie, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... points of view, Fitzroy and I are in the same boat," she said quietly. "Still, I cannot agree that it is snobbish to regard a groom or a coachman as a social inferior. I have been told that there are several broken-down gentlemen driving omnibuses in London, but that is no reason why one should ask one of them to dinner, even though his taste in wine ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... in displaying an annoying fancy for the society of Betty and the Guerin girls, who, for all Ada knew, might be what she described to her mother as "perfect nobodies." So Ada and Ruth Royal gradually formed a circle of their own to which gravitated the more snobbish girls, those who fought, openly or covertly, the rule for simple dressing, and those who found in Ada's characteristics of petty meanness, worship of money, and social aspirations a response to similar urgings of their ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... their homes in cities. There were very few who, like Mary-'Gusta, had lived all their lives in the country. Some were pretty, some were not; some were giddy and giggly, some solemn and studious, some either according to mood; some were inclined to be snobbish, others simple and "everyday." In short, the school was like almost any school ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... stable and back stairs about him. Being a sort of betwixt and between, he could appreciate my needs as they could not have been appreciated by a fellow who had never lived in the rough-and-tumble I had fought my way up through. And being at bottom a real gentleman, and not one of those nervous, snobbish make-believes, he wasn't so busy trying to hide his own deficiencies from me that he couldn't teach me anything. He wasn't afraid of being found out, as Sam—or perhaps, even Langdon—would have been in the same circumstances. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... servants, carriages, jewelry. At first, to be sure, Herminia hoped this might prove but the passing foolishness of childhood: as Dolly grew up, however, it became clearer each day that the defect was in the grain—that Dolly's whole mind was incurably and congenitally aristocratic or snobbish. She had that mean admiration for birth, position, adventitious advantages, which is the mark of the beast in the essentially aristocratic or snobbish nature. She admired people because they were rich, because they were high-placed, because they were courted, because they were respected; ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... is not so snobbish as it seems," said Raphael Leon, breaking into the conversation for the first time. "The temptations to the wealthy and the honored to desert their struggling brethren are manifold, and sad experience has made our race accustomed to the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... "cussing." Dave's mother and sisters were fastidious, and Dave found himself, even at fourteen, resenting coarseness. He, therefore, chose the "nice fellows" as associates, and made friends to his liking in books. We must not think of him as "prissy" or snobbish, but he distinctly disliked crudity however expressed, and this dislike grew and was strengthened by his increasing devotion to the aesthetic. Otherwise, Dave's prep school years were those of an unusually fine fellow, whose mind promised both brilliance and strength. Sadly, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... Square of Hook's time was tenanted by people who—though they were unknown to 'fashion,' in the sense given to the word by men of Brummel's habit and tone—had undeniable status amongst the aristocracy and gentry of England. With some justice the witty writer has been charged with snobbish vulgarity because he ridiculed humble Bloomsbury for being humble. His best defence is found in the fact that his extravagant scorn was not directed at helpless and altogether obscure persons so much as at an educated ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Braisted and I, sitting alone on the main hatch, in the rain, privately remembered our Fatherland. There was on board an American sea-captain, of Norwegian birth, as I afterwards found, who would gladly have joined us. The other passengers were three Norwegians, three fossil Englishmen, two snobbish do., and some jolly, good-natured, free-and-easy youths, bound to Norway, with dogs, guns, rods, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... a year to his cook? That same two thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation—and the starving man thinks some of it ought to fall in his way instead of providing for a cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by the publication of such snobbish statements, whether true or false. This was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the French Revolution. 'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... keep him down. On the other hand, he naturally forms his ideal of what is fine and worth imitating from the example of the class above him; and therefore, considering what that class is, he has unworthy aims and snobbish desires. Either in his own person, or in the persons of his near relations, the wholesale merchant and the manufacturer—all bourgeois alike—he supplies the mass of nouveaux riches who are the pet laughing-stock of all our playwrights, and novelists, and comic papers. So the bourgeois ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... to be good looking, but so snobbish was his expression as he spoke, so cruelly sarcastic his voice, that he became hideous in my eyes. A bleached skull grinning over a tall collar could not have seemed more repulsive than the pink, healthy features of that young man with his ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... is doing her duty—of itself a wonderful sweetener of the nature; perhaps the greater amount of bodily exercise keeps the liver in good tone; whatever the cause, sure it is that the homes of the active housekeepers are more harmonious than those of the feckless and do-nothing sort. Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holds housewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery pretentiousness ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it; a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... valiant gesture of revolt, but it is only a gesture. There is not a single daily in the United States that would dare to discuss the problem of Jewish immigration honestly. Nine tenths of them, under the lash of snobbish Jewish advertisers, are even afraid to call a Jew a Jew; their orders are to call him a Hebrew, which is regarded as sweeter. During the height of the Bolshevist scare not one American paper ventured to direct attention to the plain and obtrusive fact ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... old man; don't forget you're a gentleman," and then have wondered whimsically whether that was not a snobbish sentiment. The great cricket match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time they annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton. They would be particularly careful during that match, continually saying: "Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... out for the east in some of George Benedict's extra things, they started. They carried a bag containing some necessary changes, and some wonderful toilet accessories with silver monograms, enough to puzzle the most snobbish nurse, also there was a luscious silk kimona of Elizabeth's in the bag. The two old people were settled in the Benedict private car, and in due time hitched on to the Chicago express and hurried on their way. Before the younger pair went back ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... through Pride than to remain unfallen through lack of it. By Pride, Pride is meant of course—not Conceit, Snobbishness and Bumptiousness, which are all very damnable, and signs of a weak, base mind. One gathers that Lucifer, Son of the Morning, was not conceited, snobbish, nor bumptious. Nor was Moussa, son of Isa, Somali—but, like Lucifer, Son of the Morning, Devil, he fell, through Pride, and came to ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... ask him who made the names of the common wild flowers. They were ordinary people, so far as any one knows, who gave to one flower the name of the Star of Bethlehem and to another and much commoner flower the tremendous title of the Eye of Day. If you cling to the snobbish notion that common people are prosaic, ask any common person for the local names of the flowers, names which vary not only from county to county, but even ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... draggy, "I—I suppose Mrs. Foote is right. It's too bad, for that Mrs. Tupper did seem such a friendly old soul. And I shall feel so snobbish if ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... continued for another ten minutes despite Arline's pointed dismissal. Mr. Stanley Forde could not forgive Grace for what he rudely termed her "meddling." The idolized son of a too-adoring, snobbish mother, he had nothing in common with Grace's high ideals. Though she explained to him gently that she had only advised Arline to choose whichever course seemed wisest, remembering only that nothing counted so much as being true to herself, her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... stark sentimentalist, who talks as if there were no problem at all: as if physical kindness would cure everything: as if one need only pat Nero and stroke Ivan the Terrible. This mere belief in bodily humanitarianism is not sentimental; it is simply snobbish. For if comfort gives men virtue, the comfortable classes ought to be virtuous—which is absurd. Then, again, we do hear of the yet weaker and more watery type of sentimentalists: I mean the sentimentalist who says, with a ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... that girl is. The first week or two after her arrival at Wayne Hall I thought her delightful, but she has turned out to be anything but agreeable. She barely nodded to me this morning. I believe she is developing snobbish tendencies, which is a great mistake. Deliver me from snobs! We have very few of them at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... untamed, unlicked^, unpolished, uncouth; plebeian; incondite^; heavy, rude, awkward; homely, homespun, home bred; provincial, countrified, rustic; boorish, clownish; savage, brutish, blackguard, rowdy, snobbish; barbarous, barbaric; Gothic, unclassical^, doggerel, heathenish, tramontane, outlandish; uncultivated; Bohemian. obsolete &c (antiquated) 124; unfashionable; newfangled &c (unfamiliar) 83; odd &c (ridiculous) 853. particular; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... determining factor in her life. It had been a new phase of Lorimer's character which Thayer had presented. It had revealed him in a new light and one infinitely more likable than any she had yet known. The Lorimer she had met, had been fascinating and a bit snobbish. The friend of the Arlts was altogether lovable. It takes greater tact and staying power to make friends outside one's social grade than in it. People suspect the motives of those who are crossing the boundaries between caste and caste; ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... been reading little else but Scottish history, Scottish fiction, and Scottish poetry, in order to get himself in the right frame of mind for writing "the book." "I haven't come across a single instance of their being purse-proud or snobbish." ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... fortunate to have a canvas roof over their heads. He had the narrowness of mind to half-despise Arthur Strahan, who left equal luxury to face every danger and hardship. Thank Heaven I planted some memories in his snobbish soul!" ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... in summing up, "that, as a snobbish person, she could hardly be expected to forgive you for forgetting her, when she had been introduced to you four times in a season. She not unnaturally fancied you forgot her on ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... snobs any more than democracy'; but this 'Thackeray was too restrained and early Victorian to see.' There are at the present day a great number of people who will not see that Bolshevism is as snobbish as Suburbia, that the poor man in the Park Lodge is as much a snob as his master, who only knows the county folks. Snobbery is not the monopoly of any one set; even also is it, as Thackeray says,'a mean admiration' that thinks it is better to be a 'made' ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... his nose violently and wiped his eyes. And then his humor was touched again. Phil, the long-unmothered, the Main Street romp, the despair of sighing aunts, coming in for a hundred thousand dollars! And from the mother whom those intolerant, snobbish sisters had execrated. He was grateful that he had lived to see ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... at Nice," Alicia said, musingly. Then she took up her divining-rod again. "One can imagine that she was grateful. People of that kind—how snobbish I sound, but you know what I mean—are rather stranded in Calcutta, aren't they? They haven't any world here;" and, with the quick glance which deprecated her timid clevernesses, she added, "The arts conspire ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... frantic attempts of the poor in this town to keep up appearances, and counterfeit the style of those who had grown rich by cheating widows and orphans in bucket shops and stock gambling. The little minnows put on all the snobbish airs of the whales who had grown so large by devouring all the small fish in ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... a boy's mother. There isn't anything against him, of course. One's reasons for not wanting the marriage do sound a little snobbish when one says them—right out. In fact, I suppose they are snobbish. Do you find it hard to get away from early prejudices, Vincent? I do. I think Adelaide is quite right; and yet the boy is a nice boy. What do you think ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... is conquered. But this thing means something that conquers, and is not entirely part of a nation. Nor can one even fall back on the phrase of aristocracy. For an aristocracy implies at least some chorus of snobbish enthusiasm; it implies that some at least are willingly led by the leaders, if only towards vulgarity and vice. There is only one word for the minority in Ireland, and that is the word that public phraseology has found; I mean the word ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... he came to despise the great world with the same scorn that shows in his poem; but probably he regarded it quite as much with the amused sense of the artist as with the moralist's indignation; some of his contemporaries accused him of a snobbish fondness for the great, but certainly he did not flatter them, and in one passage of his poem he is at the pains to remind his noble acquaintance that not the smallest drop of patrician blood is microscopically discoverable in his veins. His days were rendered ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... had spoken to Rule Britannia herself. Would you not be interested? There is no one in the world who is to his country what the Kaiser is to us. When you told me he had stayed at Ashbridge I was thrilled, but I was ashamed lest you should think me snobbish, which indeed I am not. But now I ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... you know her as I do, you will see that she really is not snobbish, but only assumes it. As I said, she is the result of silly training by a society mother. I have seen the genuine nature buried by habits and I am willing to help her bring it out to establish it permanently. Nolla will develop ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... Cleopatra to let Miss Hassett-Bean drive with her. The desert horse, feeling this extra weight, looked round almost as unsympathetically as the camel had; but nobody paid the slightest attention except his attendant, who was to lead him: a type of negro "Nut," who had a snobbish habit of reddening his nails ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... portions of the country, fell to discussing the virtues of silver as currency and the effect of a greater volume of circulating medium upon prices and prosperity. The two metals became personified in the minds of the people. Gold was the symbol of cruel, snobbish plutocracy; silver of upright democracy. Gold deserted the country in its hour of need; silver remained at home to minister to the wants of the people. Such arguments as those presented in Coin's Financial School, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... jawing about breeding. It's rather snobbish. I don't think the worse of Scaife because his grandfather carried a hod. The Egertons have been living at Mount Egerton ever since they left Mount Ararat, but what have they done? And he ought to make allowances for the old Demon. He was simply ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... so rapidly that the old idea of class and class game has passed away with so many other ancient, yet snobbish, traditions. Tennis is universally played. The need of proper development of the game became so great in America that the American Lawn Tennis Association organized, in 1917, a system of developing the boys under eighteen years of age ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... countrymen? She had no true roots here. What she had done was mere whim and caprice. She was an alien, like anybody else—like the new men and prowling millionaires, who bought old English properties, moved thereto by a feeling which was none the less snobbish because it was ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... snobbish in her tendencies, even in her days of poverty; and since she enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of the old Corner House it must be confessed that this unpleasant trait in the old woman's character had been ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... an easy-going and good-natured cuss, without the narrow prejudices of his snobbish friends, and readily promised not to tell anybody about it. He also simply grinned when Tooter told him that Teresa had just promised to marry him, and said his revered uncle-in-law would have to assume the job of telling his niece that she would have ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... believed also that people should, in society, conduct themselves according to the fashion-plate pattern designed by Mrs. de Laney. He believed these things, not because he was a fool, or shallow, or lacking in humour, or snobbish, but because nothing had ever happened to cause him to examine his beliefs closely, that he might appreciate what they really were. One of these views was, that cultured people were of a class in themselves, and could not and should ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he did not worship rank and titles; it was Intellect—but Intellect that had the stamp of fashion—that ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... they lived on vinegar and Epsom salts, break out into wreathed smiles after dinner, and exhibit a tendency to pat small children on the head and to talk to them—vaguely—about sixpences. Serious men thaw and become mildly cheerful, and snobbish young men of the heavy-mustache type forget ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... vast piles of stone, Those mighty, ponderous, cut-stone blocks, With which Mackay built up the Locks. The road wound round the Barrack Hill, By the old Graveyard, calm and still; It would have sounded snobbish, very, To call it then a Cemetery— Crossed the Canal below the Bridge, And then struck up the rising ridge On Rideau Street, where Stewart's Store Stood in the good old days of yore; There William Stewart flourished then, A man among old Bytown's men; And there, Ben Gordon ruled ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... rider mounts, halts, or dismounts, is considered a proof of snobbish blood among the Bisha'ri'n: for some months the camel-colt is generally muzzled on such occasions till it learns the sterling worth ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... heads that Pat isn't happy and may have to be rescued when the time comes, but they must have felt that nothing so violent could happen in a place as "exclusive" as Tuxedo Park. By the way, don't you hate the expression "exclusive" in connection with society? I do think it quite naively snobbish, not to say un-Christian! How much more heart-warming to speak of an inclusive place or entertainment! However, we humans haven't mounted to that height yet; and "exclusive" being not only the word but the feeling at Tuxedo, the Boys ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... in those days were more gallant or less snobbish than in these, and few pretty girls, however slenderly dowered, were forgotten by their waltzing partners. The older men went only to the great houses, and frankly for eggnog. Mrs. Abbott's was famous and so was Mrs. McLane's. Ladies who lived out of town the year ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... to one of the hotels on the level of the lake. Of course I'd not confided these reflections either to Maida or Beechy, for even Maida is unsympathetic about some things, and thinks, or says that she thinks, it is horridly snobbish to care about titles. She told Beechy, in an argument they were having together, that she would just as soon as not snub an English duke or marquise, just to show that there were some American girls who didn't come abroad to spend their money ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to which as a wealthy woman she considered herself entitled. In her own estimation she ranked very high; but the best families of the neighbourhood did not accept her valuation. Some went so far as to call her a vulgar old snob; and "snobbish," as we understand the word, she certainly was. She worshipped rank; and it was a very sore point with her that she was not freely admitted into the best society of the county in which she lived. She looked to Harold to redress her wrongs. Where she failed, a handsome ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... think Beth de Graf was snobbish or aristocratic because of this speech, which her cousin Patsy promptly denounced as "snippy." Beth was really a lovable and sunny-tempered girl, very democratic in her tastes in spite of the fact that she was the possessor of an unusual fortune. She was out of sorts to-day, resentful ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek, harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the snobbish ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... from him, riding in solitary splendor in his drawing room, with kitbags full of symptoms and diagnoses scattered round, we became a mixed tourist outfit. I would not want to say that any of the persons on our train were impossible, because that sounds snobbish; but I will say this—some ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... witnesses of the events narrated, often wondering over the strangeness of the scene of long ago, I am truly glad at the eleventh hour to find the solution of the problem in moods, rather than in a snobbish pride unbefitting the greatness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... of true patriotism. In search for fame he gave up family, friends, and religion. In these relations of life he would have been and was, as far as he went, tolerant and kind; but in them he was not interested. Love of glory made him a lonely figure. It rendered him a poseur, vain and snobbish, but it also spurred him on to contend, with phenomenal energy, against almost ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... was more than he could guess. And this illustrates pointedly our ignorance of the real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their social hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with men they are not only conscious of sex, but of the difference of station. And that in the most snobbish manner; for the poor man's dog is not offended by the notice of the rich, and keeps all his ugly feeling for those poorer or more ragged than his master. And again, for every station they have an ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of derogation, will do ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Boston booksellers' memorial," which, among other things addressed to the lowest passions of the mob, argued against a copyright law, that it would prevent them from altering and interpolating English books, to accommodate republican tastes! Hear then how the Boston reviewers—who in spite of that snobbish sectarian air of perkiness and pretension which is usually ascribed to them, can now and then do things very handsomely—pounce upon their townsmen's morality. "We cannot help expressing our surprise," say they,[2] "that the strange ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... solemn way, that we were going to play a piece of Victor Hugo's. My mind at that time of my life was still closed to great ideas. I was living in rather a bourgeois atmosphere, what with my somewhat cosmopolitan family, their rather snobbish acquaintances and friends, and the acquaintances and friends I had chosen in my independent ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... "to be let alone" a terrible doom. So it is, if one is sent to Coventry by gentlemen. So it is, if one is neglected by those who, in point of education, thrift, and morality are our equals or superiors. So it is not, if done by the low-minded, the ignorant, and the snobbish. If it be possible, among the four hundred young charity students of the Government, that Cadet Smith, for instance, finds no warm friends, and has won no respect after the gallant fight he has made for four years—a harder contest than he will ever have in the sterner ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... have redeeming points." And then having satisfied her curiosity as to how hazel eyes looked when angry she gave him a dazzling smile. "We love them like brothers, and that is a proof that we are not snobbish, for most of them are not of your or Mr. Gwynne's class—just middle-class business people ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... having made changes on account of friends in other houses, there had been eight vacancies and no more. Phyllis Moore had been fortunate enough to secure board there. The seven other freshmen had turned out to be delightful girls with no snobbish notions. Seven democrats in a class of one hundred ten, with the politics of the other hundred and two doubtful, did not point to a speedy election of ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... even more contemptible than, although not so gross as, those they denounced and derided. Their editors were refined men of cultivated tastes, whose pet temptations were backbiting, mean slander, and the snobbish worship of anything clothed in wealth and the outward appearances of conventional respectability. They were not robust or powerful men; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, strong men; often they had in them a vein of physical ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and its manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting. Not that I believed Jerry would be snobbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but that there would be no common meeting-ground ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

... relations with each other. These foreign diplomats delude themselves with the belief that they play an important political part at Washington. So they do in the opinion of the marriageable damsels, who are flattered with their flirtations, and in the estimation of snobbish sojourners, who glory in writing home that they have shaken hands with a lord, had a baron to dine with them, or loaned an attache a hundred dollars. But, in reality, they are the veriest supernumeraries in the political ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... would n't be a bad thing for home use. I could easily allow myself to get into as great a rage against Warwick as Emmet himself. Already I 've begun to call it hard names, such as deadly, and cold, and snobbish. I'm beginning to see that a man like myself must always be on the outside here. I ought to have begun to live in Warwick three generations ago, or to have brought a fortune with me. In the West men are estimated ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... with Eugenie's youth. And presently he supposed he should have to forgive Charlie!—(Charlie was the son who had married his nurse)—if only to prove to himself that he was not really the unfeeling or snobbish father ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... it's snobbish of me to long for finery so much that I'm even willing to live in another person's and show off in it," ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... not mistake your meaning! Cora Haught! I could not have believed that any girl who had any of my blood in her veins could be guilty of such black treachery as to break faith with her betrothed husband, and wish to marry another, just for the snobbish ambition to be a duchess and be called 'her grace'!" said the Iron King, with all the sardonic scorn and hatred of any form of falsehood that was the one redeeming trait in his hard and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... Ruth Royal is snobbish," commented Bobby, as her mother serenely departed for the little sewing circle of the country church in which she maintained a keen interest and which she virtually supported. "As far as that goes, I think she is. But Louise told her we'd ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... regained privacy. For seven days he'd had twenty-four other human beings crowded into the two cabins of the ship, with never so much as one yard of space between himself and someone else. One need not be snobbish to ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. You'll see them laugh as he squirms round to pull it off. And, mind you, there'll be no walking over, you'll want all you know. The man's a Radical and a Lord! The combination satisfies their democratic judgments and their snobbish instincts at the same time. People forget to count the snob in the democrat, but he's there all the same, as in most Englishmen. A veneer of snobbishness over solid independence. That's our characteristic. Lord Cranston! Can't you ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... order and organised industry, and the strength of mind to resist the temptations following upon a great coup. A nation of shopkeepers would not go back on the shop so completely as we do. No nation that is essentially snobbish can be accurately summed up as a nation of shopkeepers. The French for all their distracting gifts of art and mockery are better shopkeepers than we, largely because they are more sensibly contented. They take short views and live each day more fully. But the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... bullying me, and you know that if the smart set isn't vicious, at least it's so snobbish ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... counteracted the preponderance of the rock." I drew on the spot two exact views of it, taken to scale,—whereof this is one,—now of some curious value, since its intentional destruction last year by a snobbish party of mischievous idiots. (However, I see by the papers that, at a cost of L500, it has been replaced.) Let this touch suffice as to my then growing predilection for Druidism, since expanded by me into several essays find pamphlets, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... also prove sufficiently grateful later. And he had been amazed and disgusted at Selwyn's attitude. But he had not supposed the man would sever his connection with the firm if he, Neergard, went ahead on his own responsibility. It astonished and irritated him; it meant, instead of selfish or snobbish indifference to his own social ambitions, an enemy to block his entrance into what he desired—the society of those made notorious in the columns of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... I should say," said Rutherford, coloring. "Mort has always ridiculed me for that sort of thing, and told me I'd make a precious fool of myself some day; I don't intend to be snobbish, though he says I am, but that's just my way somehow, unless I happen to like a person. Mort is different from me; he will get along with all sorts of people, you know, but I ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... another community made up of "freshmen" and "sophomores" in the high school who were accused by other girls, and with reason, of being "snobbish," "proud," and of forming "cliques," had been studying with a most interesting teacher a course on Christian life and conduct. They had been urged to show in their own lives, in school, in their social relations, the characteristics they learned each Sunday ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... been less cordial Miss Child might have conceived the catty idea that the magnificent ruby-velvet hooded evening cloak had been put on to impress the humble new acquaintance. However, it would have been mean to suspect a sister of Mr. Balm of Gilead of such a snobbish trick. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... sent more. A good number of people had come out of curiosity to see what manner of man the Englishman was, well prepared to resent his overbearing snobbishness— they were inclined to believe every Englishman snobbish. But Ferrol was so entirely affable, and he drank so freely with everyone that came to say "A votre sante, M'sieu' le Baron," and kept such a steady head in spite of all those quantities of white wine, brandy and cider, that they were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... class-distinctions, and she knew that even if they did exist, they could not possibly concern Wilbur and herself. Even Mrs. Williams had appreciated that Wilbur and her literary superiority put them above and beyond the application of any snobbish, artificial, social measuring-tape. And yet Selma's brow was clouded. Her thought reverted to the row of stately houses on either side of Fifth Avenue, into none of which she had the right of free access, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... such a stupid thing," said Isabel, still very red, "not because of hurting your feelings, for it isn't likely that anything I said would do that—but because it was stupid in itself, and narrow-minded, and snobbish. It'll be a lesson to me. All the same, it's interesting." She had forgotten by now that she was an innocent-young-girl and Lawrence a blase-man-of-the-world, and had slipped into a vein of intimacy which was fast charming Lawrence out ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... friendship much more readily than kindness, if the kicker happened to be a favoured acquaintance; if not, trouble was likely to ensue, as De Clinchamp once found to his cost! Towards the other male dogs of my team "Tchort," or the Devil, assumed an air of almost snobbish superiority, but to the females he was affability itself. The reader will scarcely believe that I have seen this weird animal squat gravely in front of one of the opposite sex, extend his right paw and tap her playfully on the jowl, the compliment being returned by an affectionate ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... met a new kind of American, a type that has sprung up suddenly like an evil toadstool. It is a fungous disease that spreads. Some hangs from old American stock, some dangles from recent plantings, all of it is snobbish and offensive. It wears foreign clothes and affects foreign ways, sometimes even foreign accents. It chops and mumbles its words like English servants who speak their language badly. Some of this is acquired at fashionable ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... conventional spelling indicates a departure from the correct standard English of good society. Alas! this correct standard English of good society is unknown to phoneticians. It is only one of the many figments that bewilder our poor snobbish brains. No such thing exists; but what does that matter to people trained from infancy to make a point of honor of belief in abstractions and incredibilities? And so I am compelled to hide Lady Cicely's speech under the veil of ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... says Nutt. "Everyone stands for Sukey—on account of his music. Only he is such a conceited, snobbish little whelp that it makes you ache to cuff him. Couldn't, of course. Why, he'll begin sniveling if you look cross at him! But it would be great sport to—— Say, Bob, who's going to ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... one of the guests at dinner. Never before had this worthy shown so much insolence and snobbish contemptuousness as on this occasion, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... are not seen again until the land is fit to be ridden over. When the season ends, they disappear till the following one. Few of them know any of the resident farmers or inhabitants of hunting centres even by sight, or want to know them. This snobbish exclusiveness is very harmful to the interests of hunting, because the farmers are under no obligation to them—quite the reverse—and a farmer can, if he likes, refuse to allow them to ride over his land. Therefore, when hunting people show farmers ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... valets—play a considerable part, and so do poor relations and impecunious dependents. For these latter of both sexes the great urbane author has a peculiar and tender consideration. It is not in the least that he is snobbish. Of that personal uneasiness in the presence of worldly greatness so unpleasantly prominent in Thackeray there is absolutely nothing. It is only that, conscientious artist as he is, he is unwilling to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... to hurry, my car is waiting," instructed the voice, as the maid ushered the newcomer into the living-room. Grace glanced through the open door of the office into the next room. In Evelyn's escort she recognized Althea Parker, one of the most snobbish girls at Overton College, and a member of the sophomore class. Evelyn's declaration on her arrival at Overton that she intended to cultivate the richest girls in college now came back ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... to be pleasant without being prominent. In every other European country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in England alone they are discouraged. People in society use a debased jargon or slang, snobbish shibboleths for the most part, and the majority resent any one man monopolising attention. But Oscar Wilde was allowed this privileged position, was encouraged to hold forth to amuse people, as singers are brought in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris



Words linked to "Snobbish" :   snobby, cliquish, clubby, snobbishness, clannish



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