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.
Rolling off the bed in a silicon sleep cocoon, Grace gradually evolves from a wriggling larval stage into a fully upright, walking and talking smarty-pants.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 18, 2026
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
Sitting down with some of the smarty-pants to whom the MacArthur Foundation just awarded its “genius” grants.
From Slate • Nov. 9, 2017
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
From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
