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
We note how the small scale, finely drawn swirls of her sleeve are challenged by the suave oval of her face and the emphatic line of her shoulder.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
"I just love the quicksilver delivery and suave flamboyance of Coward, it's delightful to play."
From BBC ● Apr. 16, 2026
“Malagueña” communicated experience and rico suave flair to his audience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2025
“Then why pick meningitis ?” inquired a major with a suave chuckle.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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
In Manhattan, the same movement was kept alive in a suaver fashion by G. O. Politicians Charles Dewey Hilles and George Morris.
From Time Magazine Archive
Gray days made only a suaver magic, thunderstorms a madder enchantment, about her eyrie.
From Out of the Air by Gillmore, Inez Haynes
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
You wouldn't do that, Colonel, even in your suavest mood," said Van der Roet; "but I hope somebody will succeed in checking her flow of discourse before long.
From The Cook's Decameron: a study in taste, containing over two hundred recipes for Italian dishes by Waters, W. G., Mrs.
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.
