snobby
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of snobby
Explanation
Snobby people think they're better than others. A snobby club might only allow members who dress a certain way or attend a certain school, excluding everyone else. Some snobby people are wealthy and believe that those who have less are inferior, while other snobby folks are smart and well-educated, and look down on people who are uneducated. Snobby is an informal word that describes a snob, which originally meant "a shoemaker or a shoemaker's apprentice." From that meaning it evolved through "lowly person" to "lowly person imitating a social superior" and finally "person who despises those considered inferior."
Vocabulary lists containing snobby
Keep It Together, Keiko Carter
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Katt vs. Dogg
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The Great Greene Heist
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Mello appeared as the snobby high school student Chandler in the 1999 romantic hit, which also featured Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026
Look over here, you snobby basketball and soccer elitists!
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 10, 2026
A group of snobby girls is called the Pattycakes, because they play patty cake, and their leader is named Patty.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2025
The movie was loosely inspired by Vogue and Anna Wintour’s reign, and former staffers have said the long hours and snobby, high-pressure hierarchy weren’t far off from real life.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2025
“I don’t know. He’s—well, snobby and smart-aleck. Always got a chip on his shoulder. And he’s dirty.”
From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns
The details were precise because St. Aubyn actually had the British upper-class background that, as Clive James noted, the snobbier Evelyn Waugh longed for.
From New York Times ● May 31, 2021
Isn’t it snobbier, really, to expect us to stick to a pre-approved checklist of Oscar hopefuls?
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 8, 2019
If he were plain Mr Philip Windsor, he would be seen as a tiresome old toff, with some drearily old-fashioned prejudices: an older, snobbier version of Nigel Farage but without the roguish charm.
From The Guardian ● May 4, 2017
Lanyard Envy has been surpassed by Clearance Envy, a far snobbier Freudian affliction.
From Washington Post
Winchester Model 12 It is well known among the snobbier of shotgun enthusiasts that no repeating shotgun can handle as well as an over/under or a side-by-side.
From Time Magazine Archive
A feat even the snobbiest mixologist at a high end cocktail bar would brag about.
From Salon ● Aug. 24, 2021
Dad hats are a go-to fashion accessory for even the snobbiest among us.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2021
It was named as best film of the decade by some of the snobbiest film mags in the firmament, including Cahiers du Cinema, Slant, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, IndieWIRE and The Village Voice.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 3, 2010
I was disappointed to learn that you have ranked Washington, D.C., as the second snobbiest city in America, behind only San Francisco.
From Washington Post
They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school....
From Clark's Field by Robert Herrick
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
