smoke-filled room

American  

[smohk-fild, -fild] / ˈsmoʊkˌfɪld, -ˈfɪld /

noun

1. a place, as a hotel room, for conducting secret negotiations, effecting compromises, devising strategy, etc.

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smoke-filled room Cultural  

1. A popular expression used to describe a place where the political wheeling and dealing of machine bosses (see machine politics) is conducted. The image originated during the Republican presidential nominating convention of 1920, in which Warren G. Harding emerged as a dark horse candidate.

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Etymology

Origin of smoke-filled room

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

Maybe CFB should go Waymo, blame the robots for any uproar about gatekeeping and big-school elitism and let the smoke-filled room return to cognacs and afternoon naps.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 22, 2025

"We didn't want people fumbling about in the dark, in possibly a smoke-filled room, trying to undo a lock," she said.

From BBC • Oct. 15, 2025

A rural Ohio newspaperman who had risen to U.S. senator, Harding was a reluctant compromise candidate during the 1920 Republican convention in Chicago, emerging from a proverbially smoke-filled room.

From Seattle Times • Jul. 13, 2023

“I guess I would like to go back not to the smoke-filled room, but to the smoke-free room,” Professor Burnham told The Times in 1988.

From New York Times • Oct. 11, 2022

Describing it as "the proverbial smoke-filled room," Lippman says she became aware for the first time that corruption within the party might actually be the reason behind the city's thinly disguised hostility toward poor residents.

From Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Williams, Sam

Related Words

• campaigning
• government