Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective pejorative Showily or ostentatiously clever.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Reduplication of clever.

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Examples

  • An exhibition at the Fruitmarket last year, filling the gap created by the public work's delay, irritatingly made Creed look like an artist obsessed with numbers and clever-clever plays on pattern.

    Martin Creed's stairway to heaven 2011

  • Mr Brown was another chancellor who set out his macro-economic stall firmly and early, before focusing on a lot of tricksy, clever-clever micro-measures.

    The budget: Small change | Editorial 2011

  • It's his most emotionally honest work in years, far from the clever-clever technical games of films such as Dogville and The Boss Of It All.

    Lars von Trier is not a Nazi, he's just a naughty self-publicist 2011

  • He tries a clever-clever dink over Schwarzer, but it's hacked clear by (I think, but don't put any money on this) Moore.

    World Cup 2010: Germany v Australia - as it happened 2010

  • "It's what you might call clever-clever, which sounds twice as clever as clever itself but is actually only half," as Evie (if I may be so familiar) says in A Mysterious Affair of Style.

    And Then There Was No One by Gilbert Adair 2010

  • He is a self-reflexive writer not just because he loves the clever-clever gamery of it, but because self-reflexivity captures the zero-sum, self-circuiting involution of cruelty better than straight representation.

    Archive 2010-07-01 Adam Roberts 2010

  • He is a self-reflexive writer not just because he loves the clever-clever gamery of it, but because self-reflexivity captures the zero-sum, self-circuiting involution of cruelty better than straight representation.

    Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms (2010) Adam Roberts 2010

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but for all its artful, clever-clever modern visual overload, it's crippled by (amongst other things) being just too old-fashioned and out of step at its core. sleepykid on May 20, 2008

    Interpreting Speed Racer's Box Office Failure « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • John Updike, who died two weeks ago, was certainly a great novelist; his books are intelligent without being clever-clever, and are highly readable.

    Gordon Brown, Charlie Whelan and Me 2009

  • John Updike, who died two weeks ago, was certainly a great novelist; his books are intelligent without being clever-clever, and are highly readable.

    Why Updike was a spiritual failure 2009

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