Snobbery
Etymology
From "snob," a word of uncertain origin; in the 1700s it meant a shoemaker or cobbler, and at Cambridge it became slang for a townsman as opposed to a gownsman. The modern sense — one who apes superiors and scorns inferiors — was fixed by Thackeray’s "The Book of Snobs" (1848).
noun · /SNOB-uh-ree/
Judging people’s worth by their status, taste, or class, and disdaining those seen as beneath one.
What it names
The policing of social rank — the anxious sorting of who belongs and who doesn’t.
Example
There was a reverse snobbery in the way he sneered at anyone who’d read a bestseller.
Related idea
Pretension claims a status one lacks; snobbery guards a status one claims to hold. The snob may sit comfortably atop the ladder and simply despise those below.