Smarmy, A Winner of a Word?

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

The word smarmy describes somebody, what, Grant? Ingratiating, dripping with insincerity. Unctuous. That’s a good word for it. Oily in their praise or their commentary.

Well, what I didn’t know until recently is that the word smarmy may be the result of a contest.

Oh, I didn’t know that either.

Yeah, this was news to me. It turns out that in 1899, a journal in London held a competition where they asked readers to send in new words.

And the journal put it this way. Most families have a few pet words of homemade manufacture, which are often far more expressive and picturesque than anything in Webster’s Unabridged.

So all these readers sent in clever coinages, like one of them was screel, S-C-R-E-E-L. And supposedly, screel means to feel the sensation of hearing a knife-edge squeal on a plate, which I think is a great word.

But another reader sent in the word smarmy, and they defined it as saying treacly things that do not sound genuine.

Now the verb to smarm, meaning to smear, had been around for a few decades, specifically referring to smearing oil on your hair.

But the first instance of the adjective smarmy, at least the first use of it that anybody has been able to find in print, is the one sent in as part of a magazine contest looking for made-up words.

And I learned this from a new book by Ben Yagoda. It’s about British words and phrases that have been imported into American English.

It’s called Gobsmacked, and we’ll talk about it later in the show.

I’m looking forward to hearing about the book, Martha, and you and I are both looking forward to hearing from our listeners.

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