A listener in Abilene, Texas, wonders about the expression that smarts! The verb to smart, meaning to sting or cause sharp pain, goes back more than a thousand years. The adjective smart, meaning intelligent, evolved from that sense of something...
Sierra in Salt Lake City says that smarts for a quick, sharp pain, is a phrase she picked up from her father and rarely hears from people her age. The word smart has meant a stinging or keen pain for about a thousand years, and that older sense long...