Word.ws English Dictionary

up to snuff

up to snuff adjective: adequate; of acceptable quality; satisfying an appropriate standard.

Adjective

up to snuff (comparative more up to snuff, superlative most up to snuff)

  1. (slang) Adequate; of acceptable quality; satisfying an appropriate standard.
    • About 40% of U.S. counties lack full-time public-health service. . . . Many registered hospitals are not up to snuff.1945 January 15, “State of the Nation's Health”, in Time
  2. (UK, dated, slang) Mentally alert, shrewd, savvy.
    • "Dombey," says the Major, with appropriate action, "that is the hand of Joseph Bagstock: of plain old Joey B. . . . a rough and tough, and possibly an up-to-snuff, old vagabond."1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, chapter 31, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • But the people, who prided themselves on being what they called üppen zie schnuffen, or, as we should say, "up to snuff," and equal to every occasion, had already seen a way out of the difficulty.1904, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in William Tell Told Again

Synonyms of up to snuff

Forms of up to snuff

comparativemore up to snuff
superlativemost up to snuff

Questions about up to snuff

What does up to snuff mean?
Up to snuff means adequate; of acceptable quality; satisfying an appropriate standard.
What part of speech is up to snuff?
Up to snuff is an adjective.

Words near up to snuff in the dictionary

  1. up to one's neck
  2. up to one's neck in alligators
  3. up to one's old tricks
  4. up to par
  5. up to scratch
  6. up to snuff
  7. up to something
  8. up to speed
  9. up to standard
  10. up to the chin
  11. up to the elbows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up to snuff (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-up to snuff.ogg.

Cite this entry: “up to snuff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/up_to_snuff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.