smarty-pants

noun

ˈsmär-tē-ˌpan(t)s 

plural smarty-pants

informal

: smart aleck, know-it-all

"If you give people the impression you're a smarty-pants, that's no good for sure."

—Al Gore

Choosing books for picky friends can be humbling. There's always one smarty-pants who has read not only the gift book but everything else in the author's oeuvre.

—Marilyn Stasio

Even the smartest of smarty-pants couldn't have answered all four of those "gotcha" foreign-policy questions.

—Jonathan Alter

smarty-pants adjective

… a veneer of smarty-pants condescension.

—Ron Powers

Every musical genre has its smarty-pants jokesters, and alternative rock is no exception.

—Entertainment Weekly

Examples of smarty-pants in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Facebook was founded in 2004 by some smarty-pants college students whose one goal was to get women. —Amy Dickinson, Detroit Free Press, 8 Apr. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1932, in the meaning defined above