smooth-brained
adjective
stupid, dull, vapid
What does smooth-brained mean?
Smooth-brained is used as a pejorative to describe someone as stupid or dull. It can also be used to describe things that marked by dullness or stupidity, or in other words insipid or vapid.
Examples of smooth-brained
Despite the ever-increasing size and dominance of Netflix, the streamer has continued to struggle with its most obvious aim. While viewers might flock there for smooth-brained dating shows … thrillers and junky romcoms, the platform is yet to be known for creating original movie franchises …
—Benjamin Lee, The Guardian (London), 1 July 2026
Smooth-brained climate denialists can try to foment doubt and point to dusty old newspapers clippings, but their arguments have become increasingly farcical in the face of overwhelming, ubiquitous catastrophe.
—The great renovation of the public sphere promised by social media hasn't made things more habitable for critics; the virtual playing field hasn't so much levelled as flattened into a sprawling landscape infested by anonymous bots, AI-driven algorithms and smooth-brained influencers.
—As AI slop has become a fixture of all kinds of online spaces-our internet searches, our social-media feeds, our online bookstores-major newspapers have been seen by many as a protected space, in which AI-generated content would rarely (or never) appear undisclosed. The newspapers that have survived the onslaught of the internet have benefited from the shared assumption that they can be trusted. The stakes of a broken social contract could not be higher, and they go far beyond the risk of a smooth-brained writing style.
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Where does smooth-brained come from?
The rise of smooth-brained as a pejorative appears correlated with ongoing research by wrinkle-brained scientists about associations between brain folds and cognitive ability.
The more folding in the thinking parts of our brain, the smarter we are—to a degree. That’s the take-home of by far the largest study of its kind …
—The hills and valleys of the brain’s wrinkled folds help increase the surface area of the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for our cognitive function.
—In a study published May 19 in The Journal of Neuroscience, University of California, Berkeley, researchers show that in children and adolescents, the depths of some small grooves are correlated with increased connectivity between regions of the brain — the lateral prefrontal cortex and lateral parietal cortex — involved in reasoning and other high-level cognitive functions.
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Although its use has increased in recent years, smooth-brained dates back to at least the mid-1990s, when Walter Williams invoked a “smooth-brained congressman” in a Dallas Morning News column.
How is smooth-brained used?
In addition to the adjective smooth-brained, the noun smooth brain is used to refer to a dim-witted or foolish person. Both are derogatory.
… this is one of the best movies ever made and smooth brains can’t handle that fact.
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