whip-smart
adjective
variants
or less commonly whip smart
or whipsmart
: very smart or clever
whip-smart dialogue
But underestimate or patronise Jessica at your peril. She's whip-smart, ultra-ambitious and brutally honest.—
Kerry Potter
Kerry PotterHe is also whip smart and tenacious, driven and efficient, typical of the breed so often attracted to academic medical research.—Lisa Belkin
Lisa BelkinExamples of whip-smart in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The whip-smart, late-20th-century retelling of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most epochal teen rom-coms.
—James Mercadante, Entertainment Weekly, 20 Jan. 2026
Inspired by Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book and clocking in at a tight 130 pages, Little Labors is a wry, whip-smart, comfortingly strange tour through motherhood, babies, and the literary and cultural trappings of both.
—Literary Hub, 16 Jan. 2026
Co-writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy fold whip-smart rom-com banter into a hyper-violent whodunit that arms their filmmaker with the confidence of a Golden Age hack-and-slash auteur.
—Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 19 Dec. 2025
The laughs are plentiful, accentuated by whip-smart actors who calibrate phrases leading to lots of pauses for audience uproar.
—David John Chávez, Mercury News, 12 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for whip-smart
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James Mercadante, Entertainment Weekly, 20 Jan. 2026
Inspired by Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book and clocking in at a tight 130 pages, Little Labors is a wry, whip-smart, comfortingly strange tour through motherhood, babies, and the literary and cultural trappings of both.
—Literary Hub, 16 Jan. 2026
Co-writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy fold whip-smart rom-com banter into a hyper-violent whodunit that arms their filmmaker with the confidence of a Golden Age hack-and-slash auteur.
—Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 19 Dec. 2025
The laughs are plentiful, accentuated by whip-smart actors who calibrate phrases leading to lots of pauses for audience uproar.
—David John Chávez, Mercury News, 12 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for whip-smart
Cite this Entry
“Whip-smart.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whip-smart. Accessed 30 Jan. 2026.
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