smug
Americanadjective
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contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority, or correctness; complacent.
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trim; spruce; smooth; sleek.
adjective
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excessively self-satisfied or complacent
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archaic trim or neat
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of smug
First recorded in 1545–55; perhaps from Middle Dutch smuc “neat, pretty, nice”
Explanation
A smug person is self-satisfied. You can usually recognize someone who is pleased with himself by his smug little smile and self-righteous remarks. Smug is the opposite of modest and unsure. In cartoons, the smug character often walks around with his chest puffed out and his ego leading the way. “Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware,” thought Rachel Field, the children’s author. What she means is that successes are appreciated much more when they don't come so often that you begin to feel entitled to them.
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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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:
At 592 pages, this book could easily feel like a smug kiss-off to all those — present company included — who have criticized Schoenbrun’s reluctance to pare down their concepts into less dense works.
From Salon ● Oct. 29, 2026
The typically smug host appeared upset earlier this year at the Golden Globes when presenter Wanda Sykes roasted him and another nominee up for best performance in stand-up comedy on television, Ricky Gervais.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2026
I recently watched with smug satisfaction as OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra model hunted through spreadsheets to reconcile an uncooperative credit card statement and then navigated QuickBooks to make sure it was reflected in the right places.
From Slate ● Sep. 23, 2026
It could seem "smug" or like you are "trying too hard", says director Rupert Wesson.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
He sat there, vaguely smug, convinced that he had the strength, the courage, and the intelligence to survive.
From "Abel's Island" by William Steig
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
"I feel crap," confessed Morgan Parra, while the smuggest smiles were on the faces of Fabien Barcella and William Servat, whose recovering injuries allowed them to do no more than prepare the barbecue.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 3, 2011
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
The indefinable greatness there is about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations, is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own point of view.
From The Victorian Age in Literature by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
