What's the difference between arrogant and smug?

Arrogant


Definition:

  • (a.) Making, or having the disposition to make, exorbitant claims of rank or estimation; giving one's self an undue degree of importance; assuming; haughty; -- applied to persons.
  • (a.) Containing arrogance; marked with arrogance; proceeding from undue claims or self-importance; -- applied to things; as, arrogant pretensions or behavior.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In a poll before the debate, 48% predicted that Merkel, who will become Europe's longest serving leader if re-elected on 22 September, would emerge as the winner of the US-style debate, while 26% favoured Steinbruck, a former finance minister who is known for his quick-wit and rhetorical skills, but sometimes comes across as arrogant.
  • (2) Arrogant, narcissistic, egotistical, brilliant – all of that I can handle in Paul,” Levinson writes.
  • (3) There was a real risk of "judges arrogating to themselves greater power than they have at the moment."
  • (4) It’s the failure of an over-centralised prime ministerial office, too small to have real intellectual and research heft yet arrogant enough to overrule FCO advisers.
  • (5) On Wednesday she declared that if Sir Gideon had sent Chloe Smith unprotected on to Newsnight, then he was "cowardly as well as arrogant".
  • (6) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (7) Standing on stage in Korea, visibly nervous in front of the crowd, he said that “I will not be too comfortable in approaching the challenge, and I will not be too arrogant in my preparation.” But, he added, the company had had only five months to improve the system since its game against Fan Hui.
  • (8) It considers arrogance a key component in its make-up, and trusts the single-minded, as long as they conform to specific local desires.
  • (9) He has that belief and football arrogance and the best teams have that.” Balotelli claimed he made a mistake in returning to Italy from Manchester City in January 2013 and that his experience would help the young players in Rodgers’ team.
  • (10) Israel’s leader epitomizes what Senator J William Fulbright once called “the arrogance of power”.
  • (11) No sufferer of fools, he also found it difficult to put up with what he felt to be the arrogance of some colleagues.
  • (12) You have a secret hope but you like to keep it a secret because it sounds so arrogant to say I can win a medal and then don't get one."
  • (13) It was hard to imagine a more arrogant and self-serving statement, as the people of Tunisia were fighting for their freedom.
  • (14) For many of us, the attitude of the European commission, the ECB, certain European leaders, has been arrogant, dismissive and even anti-democratic,” he said.
  • (15) "The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that I believe are arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way," he said.
  • (16) Without trying to sound arrogant, hopefully the awards will be an opportunity to talk to our contemporaries as peers, not just a crappy prison project, and say, 'This is what you can do'."
  • (17) Their policy decisions, including increases in the cost of living, the sale of TIO [Territory Insurance Office], savage cuts to health and education and general arrogance has burned public trust in their integrity and competence,” said Snowdon, who called the party “a joke” and said nobody could take the territory seriously now.
  • (18) It was the arrogance of power, written in huge letters.
  • (19) There was also a certain arrogance that comes from being part of an elite that “gets the numbers”, and an entrenched hierarchy meant that predictions weren’t properly scrutinised.
  • (20) To express guarded optimism about the Greek deal is not to condone the provocative arrogance of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis or the pointless vindictiveness of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble .

Smug


Definition:

  • (a.) Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim.
  • (v. t.) To make smug, or spruce.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."
  • (2) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
  • (3) It might be worth looking at how others do it, and not smugly concluding that the public likes the NHS the way it is.
  • (4) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
  • (5) I smiled smugly – there’s nothing like praise from a kindred spirit.
  • (6) And he provided the catalyst that improved the lot of the player in what had become an exceedingly smug game.
  • (7) Our political class is indeed the pinnacle of smug regurgitation.
  • (8) Meanwhile, eco-triumphalists will witter smugly about how the ban will save - what was it again?
  • (9) He had to do more than opt out of the yah-boo , smug sixth-form wordplay of the House of Commons.
  • (10) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
  • (11) Before a ferociously red crowd, in which the Australian fans, scattered throughout the stadium in little blobs of yellow, struggled to assert themselves in any meaningful way, the Chileans started with their customary disregard for defence, a line of five attackers purring forward with gushing, almost smug intent.
  • (12) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
  • (13) The most likely comment to exasperate Serwotka is the assertion that they're fat cats, a smug drain on the public purse: of 301,000 members "we've got 30,000 people earning just above the minimum wage, 100,000 earning less than £15,000 [the average civil service salary is £22,000].
  • (14) Maurice Vassie Deighton, North Yorkshire • If recent history is anything to go by, then Jeremy Corbyn has every chance of being elected prime minister ( Why smart Tories should not be smug about Corbyn , 27 July).
  • (15) Among other things, the novels work as a meditation on America's Calvinist conscience, its strengths and blindnesses, and the way that it moved from fanaticism to smugness in the century after the civil war.
  • (16) It satirises the smug, modernist home-owners often seen in the pages of US interiors magazine Dwell.
  • (17) This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly.
  • (18) Feminism , according to Moran, is "simply the belief that women should be as free as men – however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.
  • (19) With incredible complacency, politicians from both sides of parliament basked in the glory and reacted smugly when the US and the eurozone hit a brick wall.
  • (20) They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.