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"Snob" began as schoolboy slang at Eton in the post- Waterloo generation, when many more sons of the rich manufacturers of the booming industrial revolution were joining the sons of the gentry. The "snobs" designated the group of boys who were not "nobs," the nobility, those who carried the designation "Hon." before their names if they did not actually carry a courtesy title. The "snobs" were those who, sine nobilitate ("without a title to nobility"), carried themselves as "swells." The phrase broke into public usage with William Makepeace Thackeray's Book of Snobs, a collection of satiric sketches that appeared in the magazine Punch and were collected and published in 1848. Thackeray's definition of "snob" then: "he who meanly admires mean things is a Snob." The "mean things" were the showy things of this world, like a secretaryship in the Queen's Cabinet, where Prime Ministers invariably retired as earls.
Thackeray had every opportunity to study snobs in action as he grew up. He was born in Calcutta, India, the only son of a Collector in the service of the British East India Company, a sphere of opportunity for Englishmen of talent whose social standing was an impediment to a career at home, but who in India could lord it like a " nabob". After his father died Thackeray was sent to home to England to be educated at the ancient and respectable though not quite stylish " public schoolA public school in common British usage, is a prestigious school which charges fees and is not financed by the state. It is traditionally a single sex boarding school (although many now accept day pupils and are coeducational). The majority date back to t" CharterhouseCharterhouse School is a British public school, located in Godalming in the county of Surrey. It was founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian Monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield (see Charterhouse). Today, pupil and at Trinity College, Cambridge.
In a hierarchicA hierarchy (Greek hieros sacred, arkho rule) is a system of ranking and organizing things. Different fields use the word in slightly different ways, but a particular definition (below) captures the core of almost all uses. Originally, "hierarchy" meant " organization, such as the British RajThe British Raj is an informal term for the period of British rule of most of the Indian subcontinent, or present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It lasted from 1858, when the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown, until, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the United States Air ForceThe United States Air Force USAF is the aviation branch of the United States armed forces. The mission of the USAF is "to defend the United States through the control and exploitation of air and space. Organization There are three components of the USAF: or the Jesuits, the path to advancement from below is often eased for those who most whole-heartedly adopt the point-of-view of their superiors.
In a less hierarchic society, such as today's Western democracies, snobbism takes new forms, with a different dynamic. In modern society, certain celebrity figures occupy the center of an "in-group," and snobs imitate the outward style of those perceived as being at the center. This imitation is often characterized by conspicuous consumption, a phenomenon described by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen.