tufthunter

English edit

tufthunter (plural tufthunters)

(UK, slang, archaic) A hanger-on to noblemen or persons of quality, especially in English universities; a toady.
- 1840, The Westminster Review:
  The earl seeing the ecclesiastic abase himself before mere rank , clearly took him for a toady and a tufthunter

“tufthunter”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
The Garrick Club is one of those snob snuggeries that abound in London. It consists, for the greater part, of comic authors, Whig journalists, tenth-rate artists, Irish and Ethiopian melodists, fast barristers, faded dandies, “unspeakable” M.P.’s, roue noblemen, impudent showmen, together with a small, miscellaneous shoal of insignificant individuals whose sole title to distinction is that they are inveterate and intense tufthunters. The Garrick has for its object the cultivation of priggism; the enabling of its members to meet for the purposes of mutual “clawing” and congratulations, and the enjoyment of cheap, fashionable dissipations.

—From Reynolds's Newspaper, 1 August 1858