snob

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
snob/snɒb/

▶noun a person who has an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth and who looks down on those regarded as socially inferior.

■ a person with a similar respect for tastes considered superior in a particular area: a wine snob.

– derivatives
snobbery noun (pl. snobberies),
snobbism noun,
snobby adjective (snobbier, snobbiest).

word history: When it first appeared, as a dialect word in the late 18th century, snob meant ‘cobbler’. It next surfaced as a Cambridge University slang term for a non-member of the university, and then came to refer to any ordinary person lacking high rank or status. The main modern sense, of a person who looks down on those regarded as socially inferior, is first recorded in 1848, in The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray. Folk etymology connects snob with the Latin phrase sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, but there is no convincing evidence for this.