tuft-hunting

There was a little fox-hunting and a little tuft-hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian cant.

An Autobiography 2004

About the matrimonial likelihoods of gentlemen with titles and estates Fame, that most tuft-hunting of divinities, is always distending her cheeks, and blowing the very finest flourishes her old trumpet affords.

Wylder's Hand 2003

I don't call that tuft-hunting, and it does not necessitate toadying.

Can You Forgive Her? 1993

He was a tuft-hunter and a toady, but he did not know that he was doing amiss in seeking to rise by tuft-hunting and toadying.

Can You Forgive Her? 1993

All the stupid snobbishness, and mean tuft-hunting so common, are due to the same desire to make use of people in some way or other.

Friendship Hugh Black

Of course, even tuft-hunting may be only a perverted desire after what we think the best, a longing to get near those we consider of nobler nature and larger mind than common associates.

Friendship Hugh Black

To talk sneeringly against tuft-hunting and all tuft-hunters, and yet next to running after a lord, nothing delights him more than to be seen in company with one!

Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I -- 1841-1857 Charles Larcom 1921

The President of the Local Government Board had been rather suspected of tuft-hunting recently, and his appearance in the stump orator's rôle, and in the cause of disarmament, was wonderfully popular.

The Message 1912

One never knows what tuft-hunting may not lead people to do; and if I had not caught the post, some pushing person or other might quite possibly have asked him sooner.

The Nebuly Coat John Meade Falkner 1895

One was Lord Steyne, the other, Dr. George Brand Firmin; one the aristocratic, class-bred, cynical brute, the other the cold, tuft-hunting trained hypocrite.

The Delicious Vice Young Ewing Allison 1892