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
We have our share of smug, unpleasant, self-entitled locals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 6, 2026
Ask anyone else in Raub about Hainan's quest, and your question will be swatted away with a smug comeback: they are still no match for Malaysian durians.
From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2026
Henry says nothing, silently smug behind the wheel.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
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
And yet I would have every man tread the Open Road; I would have him upon occasion question the smuggest institution and look askance upon the most ancient habit.
From Adventures in Friendship by Grayson, David
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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