Other forms: smirking, smirks, smirked
To smirk is to smile in a knowing, superior way. The smile of somebody who knows something you do not.
It is never a friendly expression, which is what separates it from a grin or a smile, and being smirked at is genuinely irritating. It suggests self-satisfaction above all, so somebody smirks after being proved right. As a noun a smirk is the expression itself, and wiping the smirk off somebody's face is a fixed and slightly menacing phrase. A smug smile is the same thing described differently.
Old English
smearcian — to smile
Middle English
smirken
English, today
smirk
From Middle English smirken, from Old English smearcian (“to smile”), corresponding to smerian + -cian (English -k; compare talk and stalk from, respectively, tell and steal). The former element from Proto-Germanic smarōną (“to mock, scoff at”), and the latter from Proto-Germanic -kōną. Compare Middle High German smielen/smieren (“to smile”) (> obsolete, rare German schmieren). a doublet of smile. The specific meaning of a mocking or unpleasant, malicious smile or grin develops in Early Modern English, but until the 18th century, it could still be used to describe a generic smile.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Body Language & Gestures
First appears in chapter 29 of A Man Called Ove.
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