smart alec

"Michael Heseltine turned to me and said, 'I'm not having some little smart alec in a skirt try to get the better of me'," she claimed.

I spoke up confidently in class, until a group of boys had enough of the ‘smart alec Paki’ and roughed me up a few times.

He proved so skillful at blending “the apparently antagonistic roles of wiseacre and smart alec,” as he put it, that he was soon invited to appear on television himself.

He said that is was difficult to see her actions as anything but "smart Alec behaviour".

“Not smart,” Alec called out in a harsh whisper.