Learn the English Phrases SMART MOUTH, SMART ASS, and SMART COOKIE - A Short English Lesson

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn

the English phrase, "Smart mouth,"

and a few other phrases that are similar to it.

There's two ways you can use this phrase.

When I was a kid, I had a smart mouth.

That means that I talked back a lot.

That means that when an adult told me to do something,

I sometimes had a witty comment

or at least I thought it was witty, so I had a smart mouth.

But you could also say that I was a smart mouth.

So you see there, you can use it to describe

how a child is talking,

you can say that they have a smart mouth,

or you can say that they are a smart mouth, both works.

You could also say I was a smart aleck,

that's an older phrase.

A little more informal would be to say

that I was a smart ass.

I always had something to say when I was a kid

and sometimes it got me in trouble.

So when I was a kid, I was a smart mouth,

I had a smart mouth, I was a little bit of a smart ass.

By the way, that's very informal and a little bit kind of

like slang, so don't use that too often.

You could also use the word smart

with the English phrase, "Smart cookie."

This is actually a little bit different.

Actually it's quite a bit different.

Someone who is a smart cookie

is someone who is really, really intelligent.

So maybe you have a sibling or a cousin

or a friend who is really, really smart,

you could say to somebody,

"You know, Joe is a real smart cookie,"

or, "Joe is a smart cookie,"

and this would mean that Joe is highly intelligent,

very, very smart and quite capable

of doing whatever job Joe does.

So, when you have a smart mouth, it means that you tend

to talk back to people who are older than you

and when you are a smart aleck or a smart ass,

it means the same, and when you are a smart cookie,

it means something different,

it means that you are are just a very intelligent person.