Smug
adjectiveShowing an irritating or excessive satisfaction with one's own cleverness, success, or correctness.
How to spell smug
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce smug
What does smug mean?
- adjectiveShowing an irritating or excessive satisfaction with one's own cleverness, success, or correctness.
Smug in a sentence
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His smug grin after winning the argument annoyed everyone at the table.
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She gave a smug little smile when her prediction turned out to be right.
Where does smug come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Smug entered English in the sixteenth century from Low German, where 'smuk' meant 'neat', 'trim' or 'pretty', and is connected to the verb 'smucken', meaning 'to adorn' or 'to make spruce'. At first the English word simply described someone or something that looked sleek and well groomed, a compliment rather than a criticism. Over the following two centuries the sense soured: a person who was overly neat and pleased with their own polish came to seem self-satisfied, and by the 1700s 'smug' carried the modern flavour of complacent self-regard. The same northern European root sits behind related words for sleekness and tidiness in Dutch and German. Because the word is short, blunt and ends in a single hard 'g', its spelling causes few problems for adults.
How the word is built
- smug (a single Germanic root, no prefix or suffix)
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