How to Use wise guy in a Sentence

wise guy

noun
  • Quit being a wise guy.
  • No more wise-guy remarks, got it?
  • Your corner defined you — wise guys as well as cops.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 6 Dec. 2025
  • Also Abe Lincoln, but talkin’ like a real wise guy over here.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 20 Sep. 2023
  • But there are reports Democrats are considering ditching her in the fall, wise idea, wise guy?
    — Fox News, 16 Mar. 2018
  • Still, local lore, including online discussion threads, insists that the wise guy looms above the pews.
    — Susan Mulcahy, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
  • And for the most part, the wise guys weren't overly impressed with the Green Bay Packers’ offseason.
    — Rob Reischel, Forbes.com, 6 May 2025
  • This wise guy action has helped push the point spread to four after initially going up on the board with Washington laying a field goal.
    — Alex Kay, Forbes, 16 Sep. 2021
  • And Gerwig is rather introspective, earnest and internal, while Dunne was more businesslike, and in comedies, more of a wise guy.
    — Mick Lasalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 Jan. 2018
  • When word reached Hartford, every wise guy between Springfield and New Haven wanted a piece of the action.
    — Edmund H. Mahony, courant.com, 1 Aug. 2019
  • Eight teams have a better record, and the wise guys in Vegas have the Sox 20-to-1 to win the World Series again.
    — Peter Abraham, BostonGlobe.com, 9 July 2019
  • Now, this is the point when some wise guy jumps in and suggests that if there are so many silver linings to losing, then the Spurs should just try to lose every night to maximize their draft chances.
    — Mike Finger, San Antonio Express-News, 1 May 2021
  • The good is that a robot mayor of Chicago would possess high intelligence and wouldn’t care about flattering wise guys, hedge fund bosses and public unions.
    — John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 20 Apr. 2018
  • The Green Bay Packers made quite a Week 1 impression — at least with the wise guys in Las Vegas.
    — Rob Reischel, Forbes.com, 9 Sep. 2025
  • In the same episode, the other wise guys on Tony’s crew have a heated discussion about Columbus, even mentioning a Columbus statue that will become the site of a protest.
    — Seth Abramovitch, HollywoodReporter, 3 Sep. 2019
  • The wise guys that summarily swooped him up were rewarded with 10 multiple-TD games and a QB8 finish on the year.
    — Bill Reinhard, New York Daily News, 30 Jan. 2025
  • The wise guys already view Denver suspiciously, casting them with the 12th-best odds to reach the Super Bowl next February.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Author-columnist Jimmy Breslin, the legendary street-smart chronicler of wise guys and underdogs, died at his Manhattan home at age 87.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 19 Mar. 2018
  • And of course, the sci-fi comedy pic’s architect, Mel Brooks, is back, returning to his roles as Zen Yiddish wise guy Yogurt and President Skroob.
    — Anthony D'alessandro, Deadline, 25 Sep. 2025
  • Indeed, other scholars insist that the Gospel’s author did not mean for the Magi to be wise guys at all—or, rather, only in the strictly Scorsesean sense, as cheaters and scammers whose fake magic was humbled by the real revelation.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 24 Dec. 2023
  • One of our all-time favorites, John Hughes’ 1986 comedy classic stars Matthew Broderick as a high school wise guy determined to have a day off from school, despite what the principal thinks of that.
    — Ben Flanagan | [email protected], al, 1 Aug. 2021
  • Framing wise guys on murder charges for Whitey Bulger, looking the other way on a gangland hit by a BPD detective in Canton in 1976, the list of scandals is too great to even list them all.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Developed by Robbins specifically for Pompeo, Chicks follows Chickie (Pompeo) and Doreen, two estranged half-sisters who are both struggling to get by when their wise guy dad unexpectedly kicks the bucket.
    — Nellie Andreeva, Deadline, 25 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wise guy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: