Word.ws English Dictionary

smart-alecky

smart-alecky adjective: having the quality of a smart aleck; rude, disrespectful.

Adjective

smart-alecky (comparative more smart-alecky, superlative most smart-alecky)

  1. Having the quality of a smart aleck; rude, disrespectful.
    • The Katzenjammer Kids were fun because they made the adults look stupid. But they were a little too smart-alecky for my taste.1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 11, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, pages 63–64

Forms of smart-alecky

comparativemore smart-alecky
superlativemost smart-alecky

Origin of smart-alecky

From smart aleck + -y.

Questions about smart-alecky

What does smart-alecky mean?
Smart-alecky means having the quality of a smart aleck; rude, disrespectful.
What part of speech is smart-alecky?
Smart-alecky is an adjective.

Words near smart-alecky in the dictionary

  1. smart watch
  2. smart watches
  3. smart-alec
  4. smart-aleck
  5. smart-aleckism
  6. smart-alecky
  7. smart-allecky
  8. smart-arse
  9. smart-arsed
  10. smart-arses
  11. smart-ass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smart-alecky (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “smart-alecky.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smart-alecky. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.