toffee-nosed
adjective (derogatory)

- People who are toffee-nosed consider themselves to be better than other people, especially than people of a lower social class

The Cambridge Dictionary

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PHRASE ORIGIN

An interesting etymology is that "toffee-nosed" derives from the brown nose resulting from taking snuff (Schnupftabak). Sniffing ground-tobacco in the 19th century was confined to the upper classes due to its high cost. Alas, like so many others, this explanation is almost certainly a ‘folk etymology’. Toffee-nosed didn’t become used widely until the middle of the 20th century, by which time snuff usage had largely died out.

A more likely derivation is from the older word “toff” from the word "tuft", which was a gold tassel (Quaste) worn by titled undergraduates at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Interestingly, the Anglo-Saxon word toforan means "superiority".

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FAMOUS TOFFEE-NOSES

- "I once ventured to compliment Sir Thomas Beecham at a dinner party on his interpretation of Mozart," Jacques-Emile Blanche recalled. "Sir Thomas thereupon turned to a woman guest and remarked, 'I discuss music only with musicians.'"

- Edith Wharton was what some would call a first-rate snob. She once explained that "only eight people in New York are worth dining with" and thus required only eight chairs in her dining room.

- Douglas Sutherland recalls in his book 'The English Gentleman's Wife': "Every remark she made was designed to impress the rest of the guests with her affluence. She met her match, however, when she asked a distinguished portrait painter how much he would charge her for a full-length portrait. The exasperated (entnervt) painter mentioned an outrageously high sum … recovering her breath, the lady then asked how much a half-length portrait would cost. 'It depends which half,' replied the painter, while all the guests gave him a silent cheer."

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SYNONYMS

affected, aloof, arrogant, big-headed, boastful, bossy, braggart, brassy, cavalier, cold-shoulder, conceited, condescending, contemptuous, disdainful, egocentric, egoistic, egotistical, fancypants, flaunting, full of oneself, grandstanding, haughty, high-flown, high-handed, high-hat, high and mighty, highfalutin, hoity-toity, huffy, imperious, insufferable, la-de-da, lofty, narcissistic, nose-in-the-air, obnoxious, ostentatious, overbearing, pompous, pontifical, presumptuous, pretentious, puffed-up, self-important, show-offy, smug, sneering, snide, snippety, snobbish,  snooty, snotty, stiff-necked, stuck up, supercilious, swaggering, TOFFEE-NOSED, toplofty, uppity, vain, vain-glorious, vanity-ridden, windbag, wisenheimer, with one's nose in the air, you're-so-vain

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“Perhaps the best antidote to TOFFEE-NOSED behaviour is a sense-of-humour.”

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