smug
Meanings
Adjective Satellite
- marked by excessive complacency or self-satisfaction
- "a smug glow of self-congratulation"
Adj
- irritatingly pleased with oneself; offensively self-complacent, self-satisfied.
- Showing smugness; showing self-complacency, self-satisfaction.
- Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim.
Verb
- To make smug, or spruce.
- to adopt an offensively self-complacent expression.
- To seize; to confiscate.
- To hush up.
Noun
- The smuggling trade.
Origin / Etymology
Originally "spruce, neat," from Low German smuk (“pretty”), from Middle Low German smuk (“lithe, delicate, neat, trim”), although the g of the English word is not easily explained. The ultimate source should be Proto-West Germanic *smeugan (“to crawl, creep”).
From the Low German derived also North Frisian smok, Danish smuk and Swedish smukk (now obsolete or dialectal).
Compare also Middle High German gesmuc (“ornament”) and smücken (“to dress, to adorn”), both ultimately from smiegen (“to press to, insert, wrap, to nestle”), hence German schmiegen, Schmuck and schmücken. The adjective schmuck, however, was borrowed from Low German. See smock for more.
Synonyms
affected, airy, arrogant, authoritarian, big-headed, biggity, blustery, boastful, bombastic, buggish, cocky, complacent, conceited, disdainful, domineering, effete, egotistical, entitled, fey, flatulent, flaunting, full of oneself, gloaty, grandiose, hankty, haught, haughty, haut, high and mighty, high-handed, high-hat, highfalutin, hoity-toity, holier-than-thou, imperious, inflated, insolent, la-di-da, ostentatious, overbearing, overrefined, overweening, pansified, pompous, precious, presumptuous, pretentious, priggish, puffed up, recherché, sanctimonious, self-important, self-satisfied, smug, snobbish, snooty, snotty, stagy, stilted, stout, stuck up, supercilious, theatrical, thrasonic, thrasonical, toploftical, toplofty, tumid, turgid, uppish, uppity, uppy, upstage, vain, Woosterian
Scrabble Score: 7
smug is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordsmug is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
smug is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary