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:
There has been no more satisfying slap in cinema this year than the one Erika lands on a smug German actor, leading to a wicked punchline that shouldn’t be spoiled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2026
Sorkin’s depiction of Zuckerberg as a sniveling coward might be smug, but it’s not inaccurate.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2026
It could seem "smug" or like you are "trying too hard", says director Rupert Wesson.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
On Instagram, mommy influencers made smug posts about being proven right by the hearing.
From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2026
A smug grin spread across General Knox’s face.
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
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
Hermione’s expression could not have been any smugger; she had loathed being outperformed in every Potions class.
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
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
So Goldman Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 23, 2010
On the basis of his contribution to your Jan. 5 Letters column, I nominate Mr. Malcolm L. Storm of Toronto as the smuggest man of all time.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the Phoenix would only smile its smuggest smile and tell him to "wait and see, wait and see"—which almost drove David mad.
From David and the Phoenix by Joan Raysor
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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