smug
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.
See Examples For:
When I say good, I don’t mean smug or perfect.
From Slate ● May 10, 2026
Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Society, labelled Steinmeier's comments on the war "grossly inappropriate" and said they displayed a "smug know-it-all attitude".
From Barron's ● Mar. 24, 2026
Mr. Powell, smirking and smug, tells his life story to a visiting priest who drops by his cell for a last conversation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
If you do already manage to fit in regular gym workouts, or a game of football once a week, you can stop feeling smug now.
From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2026
“I believe the chef has prepared a delicious pie,” the admiral replied with a smug sideways look at Penelope.
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
But that movie, for all its missteps, looks increasingly like the noblest of failures, a genuinely nervy, conceptually ambitious folly from which the director has now retreated to this movie’s safer, smugger climes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2023
Even though it is 75% smugger than it needs to be.
From The Guardian ● May 23, 2018
Instead, today’s bad mommies are as smug, and even sometimes smugger, than those good mommies they aimed to resist.
From Salon ● Feb. 17, 2014
A kind of Miss Lonelyhearts in reverse, the hero is a successful writer of sentimental pap for Catholic publications, who begins to lose his sincerity in the smugger swamps of suburbia.
From Time Magazine Archive
The four of them grinned at one another, the jumping shadows from the emergency lights making them look even smugger.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
Some have called it the "smuggest TikTok trend yet".
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2023
Blinking into the sun from the comfort of his very own swaddle, Buster was the smuggest schnauzer I’d ever seen.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 19, 2019
"I feel crap," confessed Morgan Parra, while the smuggest smiles were on the faces of Fabien Barcella and William Servat, whose recovering injuries allowed them to do no more than prepare the barbecue.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 3, 2011
At the rate they are going they may win, by more than a nose, the crown as smuggest.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yes; I know that, to all appearance, you are the smuggest and most respectable nation ever evolved in this world’s history.
From Mysterious Mr. Sabin by Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Vocabulary lists containing smug
The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 3
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The New SAT: Words to Capture Tone
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List 7
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