smarty-pants
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s a smarty-pants show, but it’s provocative rather than explosive, and these days, that’s a rare and wonderful feat.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 18, 2021
People always enjoy a critical savaging, and there’s satisfaction in seeing a smarty-pants taken down a peg.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 16, 2019
Green’s characters are sweet, hyperverbal smarty-pants; they memorize poetry and say things like “I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.”
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 30, 2018
But at the root of Jamison’s own grandiosity is not smarty-pants pretension; it’s a craving for emotional intensity that takes the form of an infatuation with pain.
From Slate ● Apr. 3, 2018
Phony rules, which proliferate like urban legends and are just as hard to eradicate, are responsible for vast amounts of ham-fisted copyediting and smarty-pants one-upmanship.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
