T-learning # Idiom
Speak Like a Native

smarty pants

Choose the correct definition a, b or c.

a) someone who is very elegant

Sorry, wrong answer. Please try again.

b) someone who dresses like a teenager

Sorry, wrong answer. Please try again.

c) someone who displays intelligence in an annoying way

Well done ! That’s the right answer.

If someone is a smarty pants they are a person who talks and behaves like someone who knows everything.

French translation

un gros malin, un petit malin

How NOT to translate : *un caleçon malin

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Examples in context

Smarty-pants Spike helps feed his canine

Dogs may be man’s best friend, but it seems every pooch also needs a cockatoo onside.

A feathered friend named Spike certainly now how to treat these two Great Danes, sneakily feeding them biscuits straight from the packet.
The hilarious video shows the clever bird acting like the master and doling out treats to the two pet dogs.’

The Daily Mail, 30th August 2014

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’Jeff Zucker Is Reportedly Wooing Ann Curry To Replace Anderson Cooper At CNN

Jeff Zucker doesn’t even take over the role of President of CNN Worldwide until the new year, but the TV exec already has his sights set on at least one new addition to the network : Ann Curry.

"Jeff wants a headliner like Rachel Maddow or Bill O’Reilly in prime time,” sources tell the Post. “He cannot allow the low ratings at CNN to continue . . . so he can’t hire a nobody." Curry fits that CNN-smarty-pants-foreign-affairs type.’

Business Insider, 12th December 2012

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Everyday usage

If this smarty-pants machine is cleverer than me then it needs to prove itself.

Cindy, the little smarty pants will be the first to tell us where we went wrong.


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