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say it: SMAHR-mee
smarmy is an adjective meaning "unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech". It is pronounced /ˈsmɑɹmi/ — SMAHR-mee. It carries one recorded sense.
unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech
“buttery praise”
“gave him a fulsome introduction”
“an oily sycophantic press agent”
“oleaginous hypocrisy”
“smarmy self-importance”
“the unctuous Uriah Heep”
“soapy compliments”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for smarmy come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.