know-all
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of know-all
First recorded in 1880–85
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.
Steering away from the competitive tendencies of know-all musos, like those memorably sent up in Nick Hornby's 1995 novel High Fidelity, Fitzgerald wanted the club to concentrate on getting personal reactions to much-loved LPs.
From BBC ● Oct. 20, 2017
It is left to Geraldine Fitzgerald as a pipe-smoking Scottish school teacher and Christopher Godwin as a widely travelled know-all to persuade us that the English countryside is not populated entirely by half-wits.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 24, 2010
This wasn't Fry the all-purpose TV know-all; this was Fry the moral relativist, a person like the rest of us who goes through life not always certain he has made the right decisions.
From The Guardian ● May 26, 2010
Suddenly he is among us again, the schoolmaster's tone unmistakable, the detachable collar and know-all smile the same he wore when he disappeared several decades ago.
From Time Magazine Archive
‘I is not a very know-all giant myself, but it seems to me that you is an absolutely know-nothing human bean. Your brain is full of rotten-wool.’
From "The BFG" by Roald Dahl
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
