up to snuff

Example: “The old boiler isn't up to snuff for a building this size.”

Origin: "Snuff" comes from Dutch snuf, short for snuftabak — powdered tobacco inhaled through the nose, a fashionable and notably expensive habit among affluent English gentlemen from around 1680 onward. "Up to snuff" first meant sharp, worldly, and not easily fooled — the reasoning being that a true connoisseur, someone genuinely "up to" (knowledgeable about) fine snuff, could reliably tell a high-quality blend from an inferior one, a discernment only real, cultivated experience could provide. The earliest documented use appears in an 1807 London newspaper. The now more common sense — meeting an acceptable standard — developed later, around the turn of the 20th century, and exactly how the phrase's meaning shifted from personal shrewdness to general quality isn't clearly documented, though both senses share the same underlying idea of clearing a real, meaningful bar.