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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



... mysterious and 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 life as ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... be so absurd," she said. "The only efforts I have ever made have been to lead a normal, human life and not a snobbish, affected one. Eccentric! The conditions under which we live are eccentric. My only desire ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... with gold, and opened but to golden keys." "If you wish parties, soirees, balls, that are elegant, attractive, and genteel (how they loved those dreadful adjectives 'elegant' and 'genteel'!) you will not find them among the snobbish clique, who, with nothing but money, attempt to rule New York." The words are of the clerical visitor before quoted. "Talent, taste, and refinement do not dwell with these. But high life has no passport except money. If a man has this, though destitute of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... from her gesticulating relations as they all trailed up the hill with her, when he reflected that it would only make matters worse. And with it came the dreadful reflection that as yet he had not carried the water to his expecting and thirsty comrades. He had forgotten them for these lazy, snobbish, purse-proud San Franciscans—for Bray had the miner's supreme contempt for the moneyed trading classes. What would the boys think of him! He flung himself over the bank, and hastened recklessly down the trail to the spring. But here again he lingered—the place had become suddenly hallowed. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... you have nothing better to do visit the de luxe book shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand shop, and you will see what books can do! In the de luxe shop they are leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs and dust than the soulless tomes of uncut pages. You can judge people ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... accepted his judgments unquestioningly. Some way, with the deep wisdom of boys, he knew, better than she could, that the young Burke person was better on the field than in the drawing-room. There was nothing snobbish in their gatherings; shabby boys came, girls who had made their own little dimity dresses. It was the intangible, inexorable caste of the best boyhood, and Honor knew, comfortably, that her particular ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... pitiful, to see the 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 their ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... I sticks my stones and my bricks With mortar I takes from the snobbish? All who can feel for the public weal Likes the public-house to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... indecision upstairs I had come to the conclusion that I must in some way acknowledge the existence of my travelling companion. After our friendly intercourse yesterday it would be snobbish to pretend I had never seen him before. And yet I was in agony to know how to do it. Young, shy, staying for the first time in a large country house, among people higher than myself in the social scale, it was not agreeable to flaunt an acquaintance with one of the men-servants. Still, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... colt. untutored, unschooled (ignorant) 491. unkempt. uncombed, 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; affected &c 855; meretricious; extravagant, monstrous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... replied immediately, "I'd be glad to have any one recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny; but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is required. Probably you would like an assurance ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... 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 ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... up—Kearny stiff and haughty, and Atlee with a sort of easy assurance that seemed to suit his good-looking but certainly snobbish style. As for Lockwood, he was too much a gentleman to have more than one manner, and he received these two men as he would have received any other two ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... holidays, and, of course, of home,—home Sabbaths, those brightest days of home life,—when Trevannion came up with his usual air of cool, easy confidence. Trevannion was the most gentlemanly young man in the school; he never was in a hurry; was particularly alive to any thing "vulgar," or "snobbish," and would have thought it especially unbecoming in him to exhibit the smallest degree of annoyance at any untoward event. It took a good deal to put him out of countenance, and he esteemed it rather plebeian to go his own errands, or, indeed, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish satisfaction. "Money can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton—so smug and snobbish in their hick town 'society'—must be running poor Nita down, now that she's dead and can't defend herself!... If the truth were only known ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

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

... peach," responded Miss Murphy gratefully. "I said all along I didn't believe you were stuck up and snobbish." ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... 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, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... friendly 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 drama now being ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... 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 felt themselves and the Hippopotamus unsuited ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... have a 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 ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... 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 eyes ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... had proved a 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; yet the Arlts had ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... we do no longer gape on the aristocracy admiringly, and write of them curiously, as if they were creatures in a Paradise? Is it that Thackeray has converted us? In part, surely, we are just as snobbish as ever, though the gods of our adoration totter to their fall, and "a hideous hum" from the mob outside thrills through the temples. In fiction, on the other hand, the world of fashion is "played out." Nobody cares to read or write about the dear duchess. If a peer comes into ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... became a waiter at Mrs. Henkel's student boarding-house, for his board and two dollars a week. The two dollars constituted his pin-money—a really considerable sum for Plato, where the young men were pure and smoked not, neither did they drink; where evening clothes were snobbish and sweaters thought rather well of; where the only theatrical attractions were week-stand melodramas playing such attractions as "Poor but True," or the Rev. Sam J. Pitkins's celebrated lecture on "The Father of Lies," annually delivered ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... title, 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

... with the Church of Good Society, because it happens to be the Church in which I was brought up. Heading this statement, some of my readers suspected me of snobbish pride. I search my heart; yes, it brings a hidden thrill that as far back as I can remember I knew this atmosphere of urbanity, that twice every Sunday those melodious and hypnotizing incantations were chanted in my childish ears! I take up the book ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... pride, in this one instance, at any rate, was gone. Why? Cicely didn't know. She supposed first because Nelly was such a dear creature, and next because the war had made such a curious difference in things. The old lines were being rubbed out. And Cicely, who had been in her day as exclusively snobbish as any other well-born damsel, felt now that it would not matter in the least if they remained rubbed out. Persons who 'did things' by land or sea; persons who invented things; persons with ideas; persons who had the art of making ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... A snobbish young Englishman visiting Washington's home at Mount Vernon was so patronizing as to arouse the wrath of guards and caretakers; but it remained for "Shep" Wright, an aged gardener and one of the first scouts of the Confederate army, to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... them, that a theatre, as a place where two or three are gathered together, takes from that divine presence an inalienable sanctity of which the grossest and profanest farce can no more deprive it than a hypocritical sermon by a snobbish bishop can desecrate Westminster Abbey. But in our professional playgoers this indispensable preliminary conception of sanctity seems wanting. They talk of actors as mimes and mummers, and, I fear, think of dramatic authors as liars ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... democracy "mewing its mighty youth" as the world had never seen. He had thought that his brains were to do their share in building up this great national imago, winged, divine, out of the clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian England. With such dreams his life had started, and the light of them, perhaps, had helped him to his rapid success. And then his wife had died, and he had married again and become somehow more interested in his income, and then the rather ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... as we are), they will not deal with us as the lovable and innocent victims of a treacherous tyrant and a savage soldiery. They will have to consider how these two incorrigibly pugnacious and inveterately snobbish peoples, who have snarled at one another for forty years with bristling hair and grinning fangs, and are now rolling over with their teeth in one another's throats, are to be tamed into trusty watch-dogs of the peace of the world. I am sorry to spoil the saintly image with a ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... Chaikins and myself and from which it was separated by a low partition. The performance was given for the benefit of a society in which Mrs. Chaikin was an active member, and it was she who had made me pay for the box and solemnly promise to attend the performance. Not that I maintained a snobbish attitude toward the Jewish stage. I went to see Yiddish plays quite often, in fact, but these were all of the better class (our stage has made considerable headway), whereas the one that had been selected by Mrs. Chaikin's society was of the "historical-opera" ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... answered, quietly enough. But it was plain that the hit had told; and he was vexed with himself for being so snobbish as to deserve a sneer from a ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Mr. Taylor. I took Mrs. Musgrave in to dinner. She is an Irish lady, and Mrs. Heywood had recommended her to me as being very conversable; but I had a good deal more talk with Mrs. M———, with whom I was already acquainted, than with her. Mrs. M——— is of noble blood, and therefore not snobbish,—quite unaffected, gentle, sweet, and easy to get on with, reminding me of the best-mannered American women. But how can anything characteristic be said or done among a dozen people sitting at table in full dress? ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... description of this might have been taken straight out of one of the feudal books of deportment for girls; even her personal beauty—straight nose, grey eyes, and little red mouth—conforms to the courtly standard. The convents were apt to be rather snobbish; ladies and rich burgesses' daughters got into them, but poor and low-born girls never. So the nuns probably said to each other that what with her pretty ways and her good temper and her aristocratic connexions, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... 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 come and call on her, and I think ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... inferiority. She who had made up her mind to go through life as a superior being, to be always on the top rung of the social ladder, found herself easily distanced by the penniless pupil-teacher. This had been bitter to bear even at Mauleverer, where that snobbish feeling which prevails among schoolgirls had allowed the fashionable physician's daughter a certain superiority over the penniless beauty. But here at Kingthorpe, where rustic ignorance was ready to worship ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... 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 I don't ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... me. An old resident of Boston took me out for privacy onto the Common and whispered in my ear: "This is the most snobbish city in the whole world. There is no real democracy here. The first thing people do when they get to know you is to show you their family tree and prove that they came over in the Mayflower." ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... dislike for Wallencamp and its inhabitants. The natural beauty of Wallencamp had impressed me daily more and more, and the people were harmless, to say the least. I thought he should have enjoyed them; he had a humorous vein; he was not too snobbish; and he seemed of a nature to wish to make himself generally agreeable to people; but for these special objects of my care he had expressed only derision and contempt, with often a touch of positive ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... the "coarseness" of the professional politicians, were, nevertheless, given to vices 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

... (here he paused to glance at himself in the glass and smooth the curls above his forehead). "I am certainly quite as clever" (here he thought of his painting, and his eye sought one of his pictures), "and my position—I will not speak of that, it would be snobbish. Women have cared for me. I have told Maggie hundreds of times that I never could care for any but her. Fate seems to have specially marked us for each other. You must admit that there is something very remarkable in the way we have ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... soon forget it, and it would die a natural death. Marjorie was not mortally hurt over the turn of the afternoon's affairs. She had not been so deeply impressed with the importance of Mignon and her friends that she failed to see their snobbish tendencies. She made mental exception of Jerry and Irma. She was secretly glad that they had declared for her. She liked Jerry's blunt independence and Irma's gentle, lovable personality. With the optimism of sixteen, she declined to worry over ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... time on of course my position in the town was very different. I was no longer a poor cobbler's son. I carried my nose in the air as I went down the High Street with Jip in his gold collar at my side; and snobbish little boys who had despised me before because I was not rich enough to go to school now pointed me out to their friends and whispered, "You see him? He's a doctor's assistant—and ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... friend's dog: it never for a moment closed its eyes, and yet there was nothing to look at but avenue after avenue of trees. What could the little animal find so fascinating in the somewhat monotonous sight? A friend at home assures me that a pet of her own enjoyed drives from purely snobbish motives; his great gratification arising from the sense of superiority over fellow dogs compelled to trudge on foot. But in these woodland solitudes there was no room for such a sentiment, not a dog being visible, only now and ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... 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

... top of Beacon hill in fulfillment of a vow? To be sure, we may yet see a New York governor doing something of the kind— if he can find a hill. But this ridiculous column to Nelson, who never had anything to do with Montreal," he continued; "it really seems to me the perfect expression of snobbish colonial dependence and sentimentality, seeking always to identify itself with the mother- country, and ignoring the local past and its heroic figures. A column to Nelson in Jacques Cartier Square, on the ground that was trodden ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... international, as was socialism, which hailed this movement as its own. With the opposition against naturalism and with the new gospel of Heimatkunst the revolt against the international, against the literature of city life in general, and particularly against the snobbish literary clique in Berlin was complete. As early as 1901 the gospel of "Away from Berlin!" was thus fervently preached by a champion of Heimatkunst, the Alsatian ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... Burrell, were creed and code of conduct. That morning she 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 ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... nuisance it had been, not having one, on the day of Gambetta's funeral. Swann never spoke of his distinguished friends, but only of such as might be regarded as detrimental, whom, therefore, he thought it snobbish, and in not very good taste to conceal; while he frequented the Faubourg Saint-Germain he had come to include, in the latter class, all his friends in the official world of the Third Republic, and so broke in, without thinking: "I'll see to that, all right. You shall have it in time for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... 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 ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... "But it's something to be proud of—and one doesn't count coup for making a lot of money!" Then she paused and said curtly: "The word 'snobbish' fits it better than 'barbarous.' We are snobs! But when the head of a clan stands up in Council in the Big Tepee on Algonka, representing his clan, and men have to carry the ends of the feather headdress with all ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... joyfully, and he bent his steps immediately toward the office. No one in the village, outside of Luke's family, missed him more than Linton. Though Luke was two years and a half older, they had always been intimate friends. Linton's family occupied a higher social position, but there was nothing snobbish about Linton, as there was about Randolph, and it made no difference to him that Luke lived in a small and humble cottage, and, till recently, had been obliged to wear old and shabby clothes. In this democratic spirit, ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... had influenced her treatment of Sylvia? She was given to uncompromising self-examination, and she knew that it had been a surprise to her to discover in the past days that she was not John's chief interest. She accused herself now of a snobbish inclination toward Sylvia, entirely aside from the perplexity and disapproval the girl had caused her. Edna knew herself to be accustomed to a pedestal. She feared that she had come to taking it for granted that even among her peers she should be preeminent, ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... Snobbish as it sounds and is, a brilliant ball is necessarily a collection of brilliantly fashionable people, and the hostess who gathers in all the oddly assorted frumps on the outskirts of society cannot expect to achieve ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... 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, had cast ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... when the 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

... long considered the most snobbish of English public schools, a sad character in a country where style and name go so far. Some twenty years ago, when the Rugbaeans had the "presumption" to challenge the Wykehamists to play at football, the latter proudly answered, that the Rugbaeans might ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... name of obviously native origin from a place in France is a snobbish, if harmless, delusion. There are quite enough moor leys in England without explaining Morley by Morlaix. To connect the Mid. English nickname Longfellow with Longueville, or the patronymic Hansom (Chapter III) with Anceaumville, betrays the same belief in phonetic ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... fools who do not condescend to the same devices; if he gives one to understand that he dislikes and despises one; if he reserves a spiteful respect only for those who can beat him with his own weapons; if he is vulgar, snobbish, censorious, unkind, and self-satisfied into the bargain, it is very hard to say what the duty of a Christian is in the matter. I met the other day, at a country house, a man whom I will frankly confess that ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... colony which has yet to be written. Bowen is a delightfully laid-out town on the shores of Port Denison. It is inhabited by some six hundred people—mostly official loafers and spongers of the worst type. The community consists of boozy squatters, snobbish wives of snobbish officials, anaemic old maids, obsequious tradesmen on the verge of insolvency, and two respectable and hard-working persons—the latter are Chinamen. The 'tony' society of Bowen is about as lively and intelligent as that of a decaying Cathedral ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... have 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... catholic and wide. He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock. He was a lion who roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless. Many ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he had cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... young Hyacinth, or as servants. Servants—especially butlers and 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 risk any sort of aesthetic "faux pas" by adventuring outside his natural ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... unpleasant interview 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... 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 resentment in the public mind,—for ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... gloves and 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

... in that brown-stone palace while such men as Mr. Lane are 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

... door of open diplomacy, of continuous and intelligent inquiry, of discussion free from propaganda. To shirk this responsibility on the alleged ground that economic imperialism and organized greed will surely bring the Conference to failure is supine and snobbish. It is one of the factors that may lead the United States to take the wrong course in the parting of ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... 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 on their individual merits, and one ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... ten copies (more or less) forwarding their value. The gentleman subscriber who pays down his confidingly. The cautious-canny subscriber who ventures 5. 5s., or half the price. The impudent and snobbish subscriber who will ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... interrupted Jimmy, "but I hope, if ever you mix with cracksmen, you won't go calling them thieves. They are frightfully sensitive. You see! There's a world of difference between the two branches of the profession and a good deal of snobbish caste-prejudice. Let us suppose that you were an actor-manager. How would you enjoy being called a super? You see the idea, don't you? You'd hurt their feelings. Now, an ordinary thief would probably use violence in a case like this. But violence, except in extreme cases—I hope this won't ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... 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 ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... between twelve and three o'clock on Sundays. On our way home the count expressed his regret at the rapid decline of the republican idea in America, and the surprising growth of the baneful "aristocratic"—not to say snobbish—sense. His deductions were drawn from articles in various recent periodical publications, and from the general tone of the American works which had come under his observation. I have heard a good deal from other Russians about the snobbishness of Americans; but they generally speak of it ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... principessas or imaginable marchesas leaning at their lovely lengths in their landaus. I found in overwhelming majority the numbered victorias, which pass for cabs in Rome, full of decent tourists, together with a great variety of people on foot, but not much fashion and no swells that my snobbish soul could be sure of. There was, indeed, one fine moment when, at a retired point of the drive, I saw two private carriages drawn up side by side in their encounter, with two stout old ladies, whom I decided to be dowager countesses at the least, partially projected ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... 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 loss of its ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and courage. He was a fighting-man from first to last and shared all the chances. But the trouble is that one doesn't know where he came from, and, therefore, one can't be sure where he's going. I know that sounds snobbish. You have the right to tell me that if a man was good enough to be butchered to save an old chap like myself, he ought to be good enough to sit down with me at the same table. But what people don't realize ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... I reckon they'd come anyhow if they wanted to, but I must say, Mumsy, I'm kind of snobbish about your so-called beaux. I might like the boys if they would only stop being so silly and understand that I'm a human being with a mind and soul. I reckon I've always been too busy to play much with the boys around Ryeville. The old men ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... certainly have been better, he ruefully admitted, if he had not meddled so much 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

... superintending his unpacking, proposed to light the serpent and place it in Dolores's path as she was going up to bed; but Jasper was old enough to reply that he would have no concern with anything so low and snobbish as such a trick. In fact, there was in Jasper's mind a decided line between bullying and teasing, which did not exist as yet in Wilfred's conscience. And, altogether, Dolores was in a state of mind that made her stiff letters to her father ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... leading to the popular aspirations in Great Britain, not merely by practical success 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 ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... saying what advantages railway communication may confer upon a country. But for the Granddiddle Junction, ——shire never would have had a steeple-chase—an 'Aristocratic,' at least—for it is observable that the more snobbish a thing is, the more certain they are to call it aristocratic. When it is too bad for anything, they call it 'Grand.' Well, as we said before, but for the Granddiddle Junction, ——shire would never have had a 'Grand Aristocratic Steeple-Chase.' A few ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... mean to say that you're snobbish, too, and didn't want neighbors you didn't know? Like my girls at ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart

... to them that I recognised A. and (in the straw hat) N. They had come from Geneva by the steamer, and taken a scrambling dinner on board. I gave them some fine Rhine wine, and cigars innumerable. A. enjoyed himself and was quite at home. N. (an odd companion for a man of genius) was snobbish, but pleased and good-natured. A. had a five pound note in his pocket which he had worn down, by careless carrying about, to some two-thirds of its original size, and which was so ragged in its remains that when he took it out bits of it flew about the table. 'Oh Lor you know—now really—like Goldsmith ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... 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 finishing schools or from ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... sophomore. A few girls, 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 Phyllis to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... welcome to such an alliance, and even parentage. Similis simili gaudet. Nobody with his senses considers the like gentlemen as representing the progressive, humane, and enlightened part of the English nation; the American people may look down upon their snobbish hostility. J. S. Mill—not to speak of his followers—has declared for the cause of the North. His intellectual support more than gorgeously compensates the cause of right and of freedom, even for the loss or for the sneers of the whole aristocracy, and of snobdom, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... rotten, just as snobbish, just as fearful of the herd, as were these other human beings whom I made fun ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... not only of ready tact but of a kind heart. She had summed up Mr. Bayliss at a glance. Every line of him proclaimed him a respectable upper servant. No girl on earth could have been freer than she of snobbish prejudice, but she could not check a slight thrill of surprise and disappointment at the discovery of Jimmy's humble origin. She understood everything, and there were tears in her eyes as she turned away to avoid intruding on the last moments of ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... 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 ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... flowed in the veins of the last remaining member of the elder line of the Bourbons, without intruding upon the privacy of the Comte de Chambord, who probably would have been somewhat surprised to receive this extraordinary communication from the great, but also snobbish Balzac. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... Any observation as to the ways of our first families was always met by a cold but quick response that if there was any firster family than his own in all creation, he couldn't find its name in the social register. Indeed the old gentleman was rather inclined to be very snobbish on this point, and when any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... decided that the man who was drinking with Rivers killed him. There aren't any indications that anybody else was in the shop afterward. If that's the case, I doubt if the killer was Walters. You know what a snobbish guy Rivers was. And from what I know of him, he seems to have had a thoroughly Aristotelian outlook; he identified individuals with class-labels. Walters, of course, would be identified with the label 'butler,' and I can't imagine Rivers sitting down and drinking with a 'butler.' He would ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... that thinks Radicals deserve hanging. In his eyes that stony glare which English people have when they're afraid someone may be wanting to know them; chicken-claws under his chin, like you see in the necks of elderly bull dogs; a snobbish nose; a bad-tempered mouth; age anywhere between sixty and a hundred. Altogether one of those men who must write to the Times or go ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,—even as though he had sometime been presented,—not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... "Horrid, snobbish, disloyal little wretch," said Phil, afterwards, quite viciously. "Your cousin's a hundred times too good and too good-looking for her; but she doesn't know that. She fancies herself superior, and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... 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

... narrow path of early diligences and small savings by which a man becomes the richest in his village, to pay any attention to him, Harry grew up a self-indulgent, self-sufficient boy. His course at the seminary and college naturally developed this into a snobbish assumption that he was of finer clay than the commonality, and in some way selected by fortune for her finer displays and luxurious purposes. I have termed this a "sterile selfishness," to distinguish it from that grand egoism which in large minds ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... disappoint you," said Mrs. Kilroy. "And I confess I like my own set and their pretty manners; but I know their weaknesses. There is no snob so snobbish as a snob of good birth. The upper classes will be the last to learn that it is sterling qualities which are wanted to rule ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... died, of course Max had to assume the charge of Chad,—who'll not be of age for nearly two years,—though I should think he must be a serious trial, for Max is so thoroughly nice himself, so honourable and clever and refined, that this affected, snobbish little Dresden-china-young-man, as Betty calls him, must jar on him in every way, though perhaps Chad is on his ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... realist than Napoleon. It was impossible to persuade Wellington that he was beaten until he actually was beaten. He was unbluffable; and if Napoleon had understood the nature of Wellington's strength instead of returning Wellington's snobbish contempt for him by an academic contempt for Wellington, he would not have left the attack at Waterloo to Ney and D'Erlon, who, on that field, did not know when they were beaten, whereas Wellington knew precisely when he was not ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... a tall man, with prominent nose, opaque black eyes, and black mustache, walking beside a pretty, insipid girl. Behind the pair went an elderly couple, overdressed and snobbish in appearance. A carriage, with servants in livery, waited in the open space below the terrace, and having received the two couples, whirled swiftly ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... 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 ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... so odd that a man should be expected to be this or that in politics because his father happened to be so before him! I don't understand how he should expect that you should remain with a party so utterly snobbish and down in the world as the Radicals. Everybody that is worth ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... 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 not mix ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... to be among them. I work off some of my own vitality on them and get recharged at the sound of their chatter. People, people—give me people and the clash of tongues and the sense of movement. I don't much care who they are. I shall pick up all the little snobbish stuff sooner or later, of course, and talk about the right set and all that, as you do. I'm bound to. At present everything's new and exciting, and I'm whipping it up. You wait a little. I'll cut out some of the dull and pompous when I've got things going, and limit myself to red-blooded ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

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

... backwoods experience, and showed no inclination to disguise or to cast behind him the honest and manly though unpolished characteristics of his earlier days. Never was a man further removed from all snobbish affectation. As little was there, also, of the demagogue art of assuming an uncouthness or rusticity of manner and outward habit with the mistaken notion of thus securing particular favor as 'one of the masses.' He chose to appear then, as in all his later ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... such a place, 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

... all competent evidence shows, a foolish, inconclusive, and I fear it must be said emphatically snobbish story of Walpole's notwithstanding. In particular, he broke up a gang of cut-throat thieves, which had been the terror of London. But his tenure of the post was short enough, and scarcely extended to five years. His health had long been broken, and he was ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... Alfred Thornton was snobbish and mean-spirited. She did not like him. She decided that on the night of the ball. She had seen him exchanging smiles with Miss Harris behind their backs before Tom Curtis had introduced him as his friend. This merely confirmed her bad opinion ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... occupant of this charming retreat remained a substantial man of letters. His habit of constant work was still further attested by his face, which I admit, gave me all at once a feeling of remorse for the trick I was about to play him. If I had found him the snobbish pretender whom the weekly newspapers were in the habit of ridiculing, it would have been a delight to outwit his diplomacy. But no! I saw, as he put down his pen to receive me, a man about fifty-seven ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... 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

... 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 ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... which he might well have been taken as a model by Samuel Smiles). One thinks of him sometimes as a sort of Deacon Brodie, sometimes as the most innocent sinner who ever lived. For, though he was brutal and snobbish and self-seeking and simian, he had a pious and a merry and a grateful heart. He felt that God had created the world for the pleasure of Samuel Pepys, and had no ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... 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 ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English

... 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

... by Providence 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 single ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... her beauty and cleverness, Eleanor Watson was not a favorite with the Chapin house girls. She was snobbish and overbearing, intent upon making herself prominent in class and college affairs, and utterly regardless of the happiness of other people, as well as of the rules and moral standards of Harding. Betty, who was unreasonably fond of Eleanor, though she recognized her ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... was saying. "Don't ask my opinion. I am bereft of speech. Never, in all my existence, have I ever beheld such an exhibition of snobbish disloyalty—" ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... "Yes. I want to marry him more than anything. I don't want to marry anybody else. I never shall marry anybody else. Most of me wants to marry Jimmy. But there's a little bit of me that doesn't. It's mean and snobbish—and dreadful, and it's afraid to marry him. And, you see, if I were to go to my people and say, 'I'm not going to marry Mr. Furnival; I'm going to marry Mr. Jevons,' and I were to show Jimmy to them, they'd all get up and side with that horrid ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... people think it savors of a life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although they were very likely the foremost of the Americans in Paris who used to speak with more enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque's than of the Venus of Milo. To talk against pie and still eat it is snobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is sometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie is something. We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tell whether it is gaining or losing in the country at large. Its disappearance ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... extraordinary, and, in consequence, not quite "respectable," to their midst. However, his fame as a musician and Braun's good offices gained him access to four or five of the less timorous or more curious families, who were perhaps artistically snobbish enough to desire to gain particularity. They were none the less careful to keep an eye on him, and to maintain a respectable distance between ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... brandy, and Farcinelle 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 almost ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was unwise, introducing me to the shop, for children and dogs—one seems unconsciously to bracket them in one's thoughts—are snobbish little wretches. If only her father had been a dealer in firewood I could have soothed myself by imagining mistakes. It was a common occurrence, as I well knew, for children of quite the best families to be brought up by wood choppers. Fairies, the best intentioned in the world, but ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... been any intimacy between these two men. Reardon regarded his wife's brother as rather snobbish and disagreeably selfish; John Yule looked upon the novelist as a prig, and now of late as a shuffling, untrustworthy fellow. It appeared to John that his brother-in-law was assuming a manner wholly unjustifiable, and he had a difficulty in behaving ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... and smoked homemade Virginia cigarettes. Tallente watched him and sighed. Then, suddenly conscious of his host's critical scrutiny, he felt an impulse of shame, felt that his contempt for the man had in it something almost snobbish. He leaned forward and did his best. Miller had been a school-board teacher, an exhibitioner at college, and was possessed of a singular though limited intelligence. He could deal adequately with any ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 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, and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... 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

... 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 ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Gillian; 'but I call it snobbish to make more fuss about Alethea's concern than Phyllis's—-just because he ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

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

... go down the steps, under the bridge, and then look under the second arch, and you will see the view which I have sketched for you. It is not the view which you will find on the postcards illustrating this particular spot and calling it "Venice on the Vltava." In this the Pragers fall into the snobbish habit of going outside their own country for the sake of finding some inept comparison. I grant that they are not the only sinners in this respect; we may even have a "Venice in London," according to those who label the views on postcards, for ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... she had been asked to preside over the Social Amenities Committee of the League of all the Arts, and he advised her not to bind herself by taking any official position, and especially one which would force her into contact with a pack of self-seeking snobbish women, she beamed acquiescence and heartily concurred with him about the pack of women. In fact the afternoon became one of those afternoons on which every caprice was permitted to Mr. Prohack and he could do no wrong. But the worm still fed on ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... on her shoulder. "I was watching Miss Taylor. What a disappointment 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

... letter suggesting that 'when he should have made a fortune he might unbend himself with the studies consonant to his inclination'; and in this one must suppose that he was actuated by a very natural irritation at having been duped a second time by an expositor of antique poetry, rather than by any snobbish contempt for his correspondent, who had frankly confessed himself an attorney's apprentice. Chatterton then wrote twice to have his MS. returned, asserting at the same time his confidence in the authenticity of the Rowley documents. Walpole for some ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... He was a "better-class shearer," one of those quiet, thoughtful men of whom there are generally two or three in the roughest of rough sheds, who have great influence, and give the shed a good name from a Union point of view. Not quiet with the resentful or snobbish reserve of the educated Englishman, but with a sad or subdued sort of quietness that has force in it—as if they fully realized that their intelligence is much higher than the average, that they have suffered more real trouble and heartbreak than the majority of their mates, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... were so pretty," said Phyllis wistfully, "and mine, dear little villains, were such dirty, untaught, rude little things—oh, it sounds snobbish, but I'd have given everything I had to have a dainty, clean little lady-child throw her arms around me and kiss me, instead of my pet little handsome, sticky Polish Jewess. Up at home everything had been so clean and old and still that you always could remember it had ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... 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 to ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... aunt Mercer's land is poor and sandy, requiring very little in the way of draining, but producing by no means luxuriant crops. It is a very picturesque place, and has a certain gentlemanlike air with it pleasing to my snobbish taste. The house lies in a tract of open grass-land, dotted here and there by trees, and altogether of a park-like appearance. True that the mild and useful sheep rather than the stately stag browses on that greensward, and few carriages roll along the winding ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... and Oxford, and have a private income, it will be comfortable enough for a long time to come. But it is on the crumble. When I thought of my children I never pictured them grown up in that genteel snobbish life that I'd been ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... cordial smile. If the smile had 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. And ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... She could not entirely understand Katharine's point of view, but she seemed to be hinting that Miss Merriam was serving in a menial capacity. The idea made loyal Ethel Brown, who had not a snobbish bone in her body, extremely angry. Service she understood—her father and her uncle and Katharine's father, too, for that matter, were serving their country and were under orders. One kind of service might be less responsible than another kind, ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... so far as I am able to judge, this variety of barbarism shows itself usually in a rather snobbish intolerance of anything not good form in literature. The universities still protect it, but its home is in London, among the professional ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... vitality; he is being recharged with physical force by natural, refreshing sleep, away from the distracting influence and enervating excitement of city life. The country youth does not learn to judge people by the false standards of wealth and social standing. He is not inculcated with snobbish ideas. Everything in the great farm kindergarten teaches him ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... 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 ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... kicks gained his 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 ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... everywhere is 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 ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... "I am not snobbish," said Gertrude, "although I do not choose to make friends with everyone. But I never objected ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... ordinary English gentlemen started with a leaning towards the South; they liked Southerners and there was much in the manners of the North, and in the experiences of Englishmen trading with or investing in the North, which did not impress them favourably. Many Northerners discovered something snobbish and unsound in this preference, but they were not quite right. With this leaning, Englishmen readily accepted the plea of the South that it was threatened with intolerable interference; indeed to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... if you would like to meet her. She's awful well educated, but I dunno—maybe she'd strike you as kind of snobbish. But she dresses I don't think I ever seen anybody so elegant. In dressing, I mean. Course"—hastily—"she's got money, and so she can afford to. But she's—oh, awful nice, some ways. I hope ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... delay, the frank impatience and leg-fag of people unused to standing about except at receptions and dressmakers'. Finally the snobbish string-orchestra from Boston, which played only the most exclusive music, began to tune up, and at length, after much mysterious wigwagging of signals to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... audacity of its abbreviated underclothing, for there are English prints which specialize in those in a more leering way, and they are not widely popular like the French print. But La Vie is produced by intelligent men. It is not a heavy lump of stupid or snobbish photographs. It does not leer. There is nothing clownish and furtive about it. It is the gay and frank expression of artists whose humour is too broad for the general; but, as a rule, there is no doubt about the fine ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... 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 fondness for a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... it, I know that," said Eleanor, thoughtfully. "She's a charming woman. She and my mother are great friends, and I know her very well, too. There's nothing snobbish about her, though they have so much money. I remember now; they went to Europe this summer, and they didn't take Gladys ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... 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 ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... of the sounds he utters. He imagines that a departure from 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 ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... 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 more comfortable ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... teas, and wrote little notes, and made deprecating allowance for the eccentricities of their titled or moneyed acquaintances. They were the subdued, smiling, unimaginatively dressed women on a small definite income that you meet at every rectory garden-party in the country, a little snobbish, a little priggish, wholly conventional, but apart from these weaknesses, sound and simple and dignified, managing their two small servants with a display of the most exact traditions, and keeping a somewhat vague and belated but constant eye upon the ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... ourselves how it is that real passion betrays itself and proves its force. Surely it is by its continuance; by its effect upon the life later. I have assumed, or inferred, as my readers may decide, that Shakespeare's liking for Herbert was chiefly snobbish, and was deepened by the selfish hope that he would find in him a patron even more powerful and more liberally disposed than Lord Southampton. He probably felt that young Herbert owed him a great deal for his companionship and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris



Words linked to "Snobbish" :   snobby, private, clubby



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