Why are wealthy people known as toffee-nosed or toffs?

Answer 1

The word toff is believed to derive from 'tuft' as a Victorian cockney term for a swell, someone stylishly dressed, similar to a 'nob' or in modern Cockney, a 'gent', someone who behaves magnanimously. The older term 'tuft' originated in Oxford to refer to a nobleman or one of the 'gentlemen-commoners'; these students were allowed to wear a gold tuft or tassel on their college caps. If you read Edward Gibbon's famous Autobiography he describes his excitement at his arrival in his 15th year at Magdalen College, wearing the golden cap "which distinguishes a gentleman-commoner from a plebeian student". (This distinction in uniform and in status was abolished finally in 1870).

A 'tuft-hunter' is a person who tries to curry favor with the wealthy or powerful. There was a very popular song during the Great War which went:
"I'm Burlington Bertie, I rise at ten-thirty
And saunter along like a toff,
I walk down the Strand with my gloves on my hand,
Then I walk down again with them off."