Snob, a low, vulgar, or affected person. Supposed to be from the nickname usually applied to a cobbler or maker of shoes; but believed by many in its later sense to be a contraction of the Latin, SINE OBOLO. Others go to work for an etymology thus:—They assume that NOBS, i.e., nobiles, was appended in lists to the names of persons of gentle birth, whilst those who had not that distinction were marked down as S NOB, i.e., sine nobilitate, without marks of gentility,—thus, by a simple transposition, quite reversing the meaning. Others, again, remark that, as at college sons of noblemen wrote after their names in the admission lists, fil. nob., son of a lord, and hence all young noblemen were called NOBS, and what they did NOBBY, so those who imitated them would be called quasi-nobs, “like a nob,” which by a process of contraction would be shortened to si-nob, and then SNOB, one who pretends to be what he is not, and apes his betters. The short and expressive terms which many think fitly represent the three great estates of the realm—NOB, SNOB, and MOB—were all originally slang words. The last has safely passed through the vulgar ordeal of the streets, and found respectable quarters in the standard dictionaries. For fuller particulars of the genus SNOB, in all its ramifications, the reader cannot do better than apply to the general works of that great master of the subject, William Makepeace Thackeray, though it may be as well to remark that the SNOB for whom the novelist had such an aversion is now very widely known as “cad.”
Snobbish, stuck up, proud, make-believe.
Snob-Stick, a workman who refuses to join in strikes, or trade-unions. Amplification of [KNOB-STICK].
Snooks, an imaginary personage often brought forward as the answer to an idle question, or as the perpetrator of a senseless joke. Said to be simply a shortening or abbreviation of “Sevenoaks,” the Kentish village.
Snooze, or SNOODGE (vulgar pronunciation), to sleep or doze.
Snooze-case, a pillow-slip.
Snorter, a blow on the nose. A hurry is sometimes called a “reg’lar SNORTER.”
Snot, a term of reproach applied to persons by the vulgar when vexed or annoyed, meaning really a person of the vilest description and meanest capacity. In a Westminster school vocabulary for boys, published in the last century, the term is curiously applied. Its proper meaning is the glandular mucus discharged through the nose.
Snot, a small bream, a slimy kind of flat fish.—Norwich.
Snotter, or WIPE-HAULER, a pickpocket whose chief fancy is for gentlemen’s pocket-handkerchiefs.—North.