• n. 勢利小人，勢利眼；假內行

詞源不詳，原義為修鞋匠，補鞋匠，后約于 1796 年劍橋大學學生借用該詞來指小市民，小 商人，小商販，并最終用于文學詞義指勢利眼，勢利小人。也有俗詞源解讀為在 19 世紀初， 牛津和劍橋大學在普通學生的名字前面標注拉丁語 sine nobilitate,字面意思即非貴族，來自 sine,無，沒有，nobilitate,貴族，詞源同 noble.更為接受的說法是，標注為該拉丁語對應的法 語 sans noblesse,非貴族。

snob

snob: [18] Snob originally meant a ‘shoemaker’. Cambridge University students of the late 18th century took it over as a slang term for a ‘townsman, someone not a member of the university’, and it seems to have been this usage which formed the basis in the 1830s for the emergence of the new general sense ‘member of the lower orders’ (‘The nobs have lost their dirty seats – the honest snobs have got ’em’, proclaimed the Lincoln Herald on 22 July 1831, anticipating the new Reform Act).

This in turn developed into ‘ostentatiously vulgar person’, but it was the novelist William Thackeray who really sowed the seeds of the word’s modern meaning in his Book of Snobs 1848, where he used it for ‘someone vulgarly aping his social superiors’. It has since broadened out to include those who insist on their gentility as well as those who aspire to it. As for the origins of the word snob itself, they remain a mystery.

An ingenious suggestion once put forward is that it came from s. nob., supposedly an abbreviation for Latin sine nobilitate ‘without nobility’, but this ignores the word’s early history.

snob (n.)

1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and passed then into literary use, where by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" is by 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 the word had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste."

1. People want to buy designer labels for snob value.

人們想買名牌是為了滿足虛榮心。

來自柯林斯例句

2. She was an intellectual snob.

她自以為才智高人一等。

來自柯林斯例句

3. I was a thorough little academic snob.

我那時是個目空一切、自以為是的小學術憤青。

來自柯林斯例句

4. Kenneth is an arrogant, rude, social snob.

肯尼斯是一個傲慢粗魯只喜歡結交權貴的勢利鬼。

來自柯林斯例句

5. She's such a snob!

她竟是這樣一個勢利眼！

來自《權威詞典》