Word.ws English Dictionary

too clever by half

too clever by half adjective: shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.

Adjective

too clever by half

  1. (idiomatic, usually, plan, theory) Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.
    • [H]e had a damnable suppleness and a gift of immediate response, a readiness to oblige, that made him seem to take up causes which he really left lying, enabled him to learn enough about them in an hour to have all the air of having converted them to his use. . . . He was at all events too clever...1889–1890, Henry James, chapter XLVII, in The Tragic Muse […], volume (please specify the page), Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], published 7 June 1890, →OCLC
    • The poor devil was too clever by half, and made a big mistake for each of his strokes of genius.1914, E. W. Hornung, chapter 8, in The Crime Doctor

Examples of too clever by half in a sentence

  • He was at all events too clever by half, since this pernicious overflow had wrecked most of his attempts.1889–1890, Henry James, chapter XLVII, in The Tragic Muse […], volume (please specify the page), Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton...
  • Historians generally agree that Roosevelt was too clever by half, and that he miscalculated badly in assuming that he had the political muscle to alter the size of the Court.1993 March 21, Robert Dallek, “Roosevelt Unbound”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
  • Still, the thing about being just a little too clever by half is that it tends to catch up with you.2011 April 28, David Prosser, “Did Barclays' own executives see the bank coming?”, in The Independent:

Questions about too clever by half

What does too clever by half mean?
Too clever by half means shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.
How do you use too clever by half in a sentence?
He was at all events too clever by half, since this pernicious overflow had wrecked most of his attempts.
What part of speech is too clever by half?
Too clever by half is an adjective.

Words near too clever by half in the dictionary

  1. too big for one's boots
  2. too big for one's breeches
  3. too big for one's britches
  4. too big to fail
  5. too big to jail
  6. too clever by half
  7. too close for comfort
  8. too close to call
  9. too close to the sun
  10. Too Cool
  11. too cool for school

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: too clever by half (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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