[f. SMUG a.] The condition or quality of being smug.
1632. Sherwood, Smugnesse, netteté.
1677. Wycherley, Pl. Dealer, III. i. She looks like an old Coach new painted; affecting an unseemly Smugness.
1755. H. Walpole, Corr. (1903), III. 341. I like the smugness of the cathedral, and the profusion of the most beautiful Gothic tombs.
1789. Mrs. Piozzi, Journ. France, II. 78. No smugness … ever crossed the fancy of Schidone.
1836. Tait’s Mag., III. 491. It has been … smoothened, and tamed down to smugness, by cultivation, enclosing, and planting.
1883. Contemp. Rev., Oct., 602. There is probably no smugness in the world comparable to the complacent smugness of our insular ignorance.
