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:
Competing as “A Dumb Reporter” with a fictional $1 million, I challenged Grok and felt pretty smug early on.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
You can see this smug ease in Citi’s Panic/Euphoria Model External link, a gauge of sentiment now called the Levkovich Index.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
They’re insincere and elitist and out of touch and smug in many respects, from the perspective of a young man.
From Slate ● Mar. 25, 2026
Ask anyone else in Raub about Hainan's quest, and your question will be swatted away with a smug comeback: they are still no match for Malaysian durians.
From BBC ● Jan. 10, 2026
The video cuts to a smug Althea Sharpe in front of the same building.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
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
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
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
Yes; I know that, to all appearance, you are the smuggest and most respectable nation ever evolved in this world’s history.
From Mysterious Mr. Sabin by Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
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.
