How Smart Are You?

At a wedding we were invited to when we lived in Canada, I told two male friends that they were looking smart that day. They were flattered by the compliment. However, the meaning they took from my words was completely different from the one I intended to convey! I was trying to tell them that they looked nicely dressed in their best clothes; what they understood was that I thought they looked intelligent. I learned that day that the word smart means different things depending on which side of the pond you’re from.

Smart has been in use in the English language for hundreds of years, but according to an article by Jen Doll in The Atlantic in 2013, it only took on the meaning of clever or intelligent in the 1800s. By the 1880s, its use in this capacity had become sufficiently widespread that the word no longer needed to appear in quotes. This meaning, of course, is now the primary one in North America.

In the UK, however, if you say that someone or something is smart, you’re talking about a tidy, stylish, or fresh appearance. For example, you would look smart to go to a wedding, as our friends did, or a building could look smart after being repainted. If you had a high IQ, you would usually be described as intelligent, clever, or bright. Due to the influence of Hollywood, TV, and other media, though, the North American meaning of the word is making inroads, and even more so as terms such as smartphone and smart speaker become part of modern life. However, as a general rule, if you’re talking about an intelligent person in a British setting, it would be smart to choose a word other than smart.