suave
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of suave
1495–1505; < French < Latin suāvis sweet
Explanation
To be suave is to be smooth, polite, and a little bit cool. Men can be suave and debonair, especially the ones riding horses on the covers of romance novels. Suave is from the Latin word suavis which means "agreeable." To be suave is still to be agreeable — a suave person knows how to work the room, and you might want to appear suave and sophisticated when you meet your sweetie's parents. Although it's an old fashioned compliment, suave has morphed into something meaning a little bit cheesy.
Vocabulary lists containing suave
100 Words to Make You Sound Smart
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The Odyssey
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The Catcher in the Rye
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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:
Later, when Bond is whisked to Vietnam, the orchestra swells with suave panache, immersing you in the action before 007 has even uttered a quip.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
"I just love the quicksilver delivery and suave flamboyance of Coward, it's delightful to play."
From BBC ● Apr. 16, 2026
In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had the option of choosing a suave political moderate in Shinjiro Koizumi to lead it into the next election.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2025
Of the singing actors that come from musical theater, Amando Castro is a fiery Anita; P. Tucker Worley, buoyant Riff; Yurel Echezarreta, a suave Bernardo.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2025
“That’s very suave, very cool,” Ben said, watching the moon light up the black waters of the Edisto River as they traveled toward Charleston going seventy-five.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
Clearly, he hasn’t kept up with Seattle hip-hop’s experimental guiding light Ishmael Butler, who at 54, has only gotten suaver with age.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 23, 2023
The conductor Marek Janowski also charted the transition from a lively sound in the prologue to a suaver, more sumptuous one, moving with nimble energy throughout.
From New York Times ● Mar. 3, 2022
While those performances are sometimes a bit more strait-laced expressively than today's much suaver period-instrument bands, there is a wonderfully uncomplicated directness about the singing and playing that is always fully engaged.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 17, 2013
Kingsley Amis has some of the suaver qualities of a clubroom raconteur.
From Time Magazine Archive
But nothing could be suaver than that gentleman's 'Good Shabbos.
From Ghetto Comedies by Israel Zangwill
Virginia depicted herself and her husband Leonard “lying crushed under an immense manuscript of Gertrude Stein’s”—and so, literary modernism’s eccentric pioneer was rejected by its suavest representative.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
Having used Tilda Swinton in that movie, as the suavest of bloodsuckers, he redeploys her here as a Buddha-worshipping, sword-swiping mortician named Zelda Winston.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 14, 2019
Moore recalled that when he took his young son Geoffrey to lunch one afternoon in the early 1970s, he endured an interrogation that would rattle even the suavest super-spy.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2017
Sanders, Hollywood’s suavest cad of the 1940s, typically delivered his lines with a silken, self-satisfied purr and was much appreciated by Sirk for his sense of supercilious irony.
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2016
"Good-mornin', Cousin Phœbe," he said, with his suavest manner.
From The Panchronicon by Harold Steele MacKaye
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.
