snob appeal

noun

1. the attributes of something that appeal to people who associate those qualities with social or intellectual superiority; a thing's attractiveness to snobs.

Word History and Origins

Origin of snob appeal¹

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

“There is a certain snob appeal that goes with using ‘R’ these days.”

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GM has been producing competent Corvettes since the 1950s — two-seaters long on under-the-hood oomph but short on the kind of snob appeal that Aston Martins, Porsches and the like command.

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And it can get rather exhausting that the justification always has to come back to a comparison to Nora Ephron, the only purveyor of rom-coms who has undeniable crossover film snob appeal.

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“If it weren’t for the snob appeal of owning swans, we probably wouldn’t have them.”

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“At a moment in history when, with the rise of mass media, popular opinion was emerging in France as a force of unprecedented and unreckoned power,” Weber observes, “they infused the snob appeal of class-based privilege with a thoroughly modern knack for publicity and self-promotion.”

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