too clever by half

adj

Definitions

  1. Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to…

    Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful.

    • The poor devil was too clever by half, and made a big mistake for each of his strokes of genius.
    • Historians generally agree that Roosevelt was too clever by half, and that he miscalculated badly in assuming that he had the political muscle to alter the size of the Court.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for too clever by half. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA