smoke-filled room
smoke-filled room noun: a place where powerful people meet to decide a matter in secret, often of a political nature.
Noun
smoke-filled room (plural smoke-filled rooms)
- A place where powerful people meet to decide a matter in secret, often of a political nature.
- Near-synonym: backroom (as a meeting place of crooked insiders)
- In its first decade, prize business was settled in the smoke-filled rooms of London clubs, where it remained resolutely insular.2009, Robert McCrum, “No Tóibín, no Trevor? Yes, it's time for more Booker controversy”, in The Guardian
- Synonyms:
- backroom[insider]]s>
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see smoke, filled, room.
Synonyms of smoke-filled room
- backroom[insider]]s>
Forms of smoke-filled room
| plural | smoke-filled rooms |
|---|
Questions about smoke-filled room
- What does smoke-filled room mean?
- Smoke-filled room means a place where powerful people meet to decide a matter in secret, often of a political nature.
- What part of speech is smoke-filled room?
- Smoke-filled room is a noun.
- What is the plural of smoke-filled room?
- The plural of smoke-filled room is smoke-filled rooms.
Words near smoke-filled room in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: smoke-filled room (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-smoke-filled room.ogg.
Cite this entry: “smoke-filled room.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smoke-filled_room. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.