Smart Alec
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"smart al·eck" or "smart alec"
A person regarded as obnoxiously self-assertive. An impudent person.
According to G.L. Cohen, author of Studies in Slang Part 1 (1985), the phrase smart alec(k) arose from the exploits of Alec Hoag. A celebrated pimp, thief, and confidence man operating out of New York City in the 1840s, Mr. Hoag, along with his wife Melinda and an accomplice known as "French Jack," operated a con called the "panel game," a method by which prostitutes and their pimps robbed foolish customers.
The key to his activities was that they did so in close association with two police officers, who shared the loot and provided protection. Most was done by what was in effect pickpocketing, with Melinda taking the victim’s pocketbook while they were otherwise engaged and surreptitiously handing it to Hoag or French Jack as they walked by. So far, so commonplace. However, his downfall came because he got into financial difficulties and tried to cheat his police protectors out of their share of the loot. One way was that Hoag lay behind a wall in a churchyard and had Melinda drop the goods over the wall to him so that the constables couldn’t see the exchange
The aforementioned "panel game" was a trick also used by the original Smart Alec, although not used exclusively by him. George Wilkes, the assistant editor of the Subterranean, met Hoag while Wilkes was falsely imprisoned in the infamous New York prison called The Tombs. Wilkes described the trick in a diary of 1844, The Mysteries of the Tombs: “Melinda would make her victim lay his clothes, as he took them off, upon a chair at the head of the bed near the secret panel, and then take him to her arms and closely draw the curtains of the bed. As soon as everything was right and the dupe not likely to heed outside noises, the traitress would give a cough, and the faithful Aleck would slily enter, rifle the pockets of every farthing or valuable thing, and finally disappear as mysteriously as he entered.” The victim was then persuaded to leave in a hurry through a window by Alec banging on the door, pretending to be an aggrieved husband who has suddenly returned from a trip away.
Hoag used this trick to avoid paying off his police protectors, so that when he was caught, the police were in no mood to aid him. He was sentenced to jail, but escaped through the help of his brother, only to be recaptured following extensive police searches (by one of those odd coincidences, having been recognised by Wilkes).
Professor Cohen suggests that Alex Hoag was given the sobriquet of smart Alec by the police for being a resourceful thief who outsmarted himself by trying to avoid paying graft. It’s impossible to be certain this is the true story, since the expression doesn’t appear in print until 1865, but it does seem extremely plausible.
A search of several of the more reliable dictionaries pretty much confirms this definition. The Oxford English Dictionary traces it to mid-1860s slang, while the American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed., 2000) and Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (16th ed., 1999) tentatively trace the etymology of the phrase to Hoag.
[edit] In popular culture
- Smart Alec (1921 film), a silent film comedy starring Harry Sweet
- Smart Alec (1951 film), a black and white pornographic film starring Candy Barr
- Smart Alec (1986 film), a comedy about filmmaking directed by Jim Wilson
Several sound-alike titles have also been released:
- Smart Alecks (1942)
- The Smart Aleck (1920)
- The Smart Aleck (1951)
- Smart Alek (1993)
- Smart Alex (1987)
