Word.ws English Dictionary

smart-arse

smart-arse is the alternative form of smart arse.

Meaning of smart arse

Noun

smart arse (plural smart arses)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, idiomatic) One who is particularly flippant or insolent or tends to make snide remarks or jokes.
    • ‘That Howard kid is a smart-arse little bugger!’1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 51

Forms of smart-arse

pluralsmart-arses

Questions about smart-arse

What is smart-arse the alternative form of?
Smart-arse is the alternative form of smart arse.

Words near smart-arse in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smart-arse (page history and authors); smart arse (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.

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