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.

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

Cole, a world-class smarty-pants, and Pike, an implacable and scary ex-Marine, make a terrific pair.

From Seattle Times • Jul. 31, 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