snobbery (n.)

1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," a word of unknown origin. It is said to have been used in Cambridge University slang from c. 1796, often contemptuously, for "townsman, local merchant," and then passed into literary use, where by 1831 it meant "person of the ordinary or lower classes."

The 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 sense of "one who despises those who are considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste" [OED], which reverses the sense of a century before. Inverted snob is from 1909:

Then there is that singular anomaly, the Inverted Snob, who balances a chip on his shoulder and thinks that everyone of wealth or social prominence is necessarily to be distrusted; that the rich are always pretentious and worldly, while those who have few material possessions are themselves possessed (like Rose Aylmer) of every virtue, every grace. [Atlantic Monthly, February 1922]

word-forming element making nouns meaning "place for, art of, condition of, quantity of," from Middle English -erie, from Latin -arius (see -ary). Also sometimes in modern colloquial use "the collectivity of" or "an example of."