smart mouth
North American informal
noun
An ability or tendency to make cheeky retorts; impudence: why do you hide behind that smart mouth all the time?...
- During that time, I learned to hide myself behind a smart mouth and my studies.
- The police evidence to be presented appears to indicate a smart mouth whose group was asked to leave the hotel (no indication of drunkenness) because of excess noise and rowdy behaviour and to be quiet in the street when they left.
- I had a smart mouth that got me in trouble.
verb
(smart-mouth) [no object] Make impudent remarks to someone: he started smart-mouthing [with object]: don’t you smart-mouth me...
- Situation comedies ran rampant with ‘unwholesome’ situations involving gays, lesbians and glorified versions of ungodly lifestyles ranging from unwed couples sleeping together to children smart-mouthing to their parents.
- I see what your brother meant by you being so good at smart-mouthing.
- But she's not actually ugly; she's just pert and smart-mouthed and has a sexy voice, completely according with that romcom genre convention of the comic sidekick to the heroine.
Derivatives
smart-mouthed
- After only 20-odd pages of this 300-plus page travelogue I wondered if Kalder was spoofing, making up his whole jocular, smart-mouthed journey across out-of-this-world terrain.
- The most exciting part of the night came shortly after the third pub, when I got involved in a minor dust-up with a smart-mouthed, chemically enhanced nightclub patron.
- This was her way, she writes, of reassuring him that his smart-mouthed daughter was still there.