smoke-filled room
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.
Maybe CFB should go Waymo, blame the robots for any uproar about gatekeeping and big-school elitism and let the smoke-filled room return to cognacs and afternoon naps.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025
"We didn't want people fumbling about in the dark, in possibly a smoke-filled room, trying to undo a lock," she said.
From BBC • Oct. 15, 2025
A rural Ohio newspaperman who had risen to U.S. senator, Harding was a reluctant compromise candidate during the 1920 Republican convention in Chicago, emerging from a proverbially smoke-filled room.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 13, 2023
“I guess I would like to go back not to the smoke-filled room, but to the smoke-free room,” Professor Burnham told The Times in 1988.
From New York Times • Oct. 11, 2022
It sent me scuttling across the hall to the sporting editor's smoke-filled room.
From Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed by Ferber, Edna
