I have seen the word (or term) "snoot" defined as a person who is punctilious about words, grammar, punctuation, pronunciation, and allied linguistic skills. I'm told that snoot is less off-putting than such pejorative terms as grammar nazi, word nerd, syntax snob, or language police. David Foster Wallace called those terms "outright dysphemisms" and defined a snoot as "somebody who knows what dysphemism means and doesn't mind letting you know it." See Wallace, "Tense Present," Harper's, Apr. 2001, at 39.(PDF)
But is snoot a real word or a coined term, and if the latter, how was it coined?