The word 'smartass' is a slang term that is considered to be acceptable in informal written English.
It can be used to describe someone who is thought to be too clever or wise for their own good. For example, "Whenever his parents asked him to do something, he always had a smartass reply".
What stops this book from being a self-pitying whinge is the extent to which Mr Young is prepared to humour himself, and his open-hearted quest for the love of Caroline, who cares little for nail polish and prefers the intelligent Mr Young to the smartass version.
A smartass wag might jest that Payne does not understand the dramaturgical principle of draft-exclusion or, to put it slightly more positively, that he has a strong susceptibility to drafts, given the purposeful prevarication of Constellations and its refusal to discriminate amongst the host of hypothetical variants through which the couple in this two-hander travel.
The Contract by David Levien (Bantam, £12.99) Thrillers by Hollywood screenwriters can be woeful, their authors under the impression that smartass dialogue will cover any cracks in the plot.
I remember when I was in elementary school, the smartass kids were always talking about googols.
And he was a smartass, and that didn't help.
This was a live-action Mad magazine movie-parody: smartass, juvenile, subversive and played absolutely straight by a cast of stone-faced matinee idols drawn from the very movies that Airplane! spoofed.
I don't say that to be a smartass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good.
"I was a smartass film student who thought he knew everything about movies," Singleton said.
Make of that what you will though the real message I want you to take is that I'm a smartass seller of banal meta-fictions.
Anything but be obliged to designate my every character an ageing five-foot-two smartass, and having to set every novel in North Carolina.
The medieval meets the modern The smartass, sceptical, secular intelligence governing Courage is at war with a fatal darkness.
