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:
As the government prosecutor, Norwegian actor Christian Rubeck gives a smug and condescending tone to nearly every word out of his mouth, becoming the closest thing the movie has to a villain.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
Yet Schoenbrun’s observations are presented in the film as though they’re opaque, overloaded with smug surrealism and jam-packed with visual stimuli designed to wink and nudge at the otherwise obvious.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026
It could seem "smug" or like you are "trying too hard", says director Rupert Wesson.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
Swanning around that flawless midcentury lair in bucolic Southern California, smug land of the $22 smoothie, the 3 p.m. goat yoga class, and the unwanted, inexplicable reboot.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Mr. Kravitz gave Jeremy a smug, nasty smile and waited for him to answer.
From "Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher" by Bruce Coville
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
The Kenwigses, with whom Nicholas boards for a spell, are even smugger and snugger: more than a dozen Kenwigses and friends squeeze nightly into their snuffbox-size parlor.
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
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
At the rate they are going they may win, by more than a nose, the crown as smuggest.
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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