as in wise
displaying or marked by rude boldness
a cocky young actor who thought that he was God's gift to the theater
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Recent Examples of cocky
Unfortunately for Mauser, the ruthless Rockwell isn’t so quick to offer the cocky young athlete a second chance.
—
Martha Ross, Mercury News, 31 Dec. 2025
Few could top Tom Cruise as a cocky Naval aviator, but Val Kilmer did.
—Lee Cowan, CBS News, 28 Dec. 2025
As a hero, Mauser is appealing; abrasive, cocky, and duplicitous but nonetheless charming, authentic, and intrepid.
—Julien Levy, Rolling Stone, 27 Dec. 2025
Seizing the opportunity to humble this cocky nobody, Rockwell tells Mauser to get a ping pong paddle and pull his pants down for a public spanking.
—Mike Miller, Entertainment Weekly, 25 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cocky
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cocky
Adjective
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Or similarly, users pointing out that the Ratliff children, when seated three abreast, resemble the three wise monkeys of see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.—
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Up in the balcony, even Statler and Waldorf have stopped cracking wise.—
Adjective
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Beane was so cocksure Allen’s solo act would work again that the GM made only minor moves to improve the offense.—
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Set on a white-run construction site in West Africa, the story follows an edgy foreman anxiously awaiting his bride, whose presence meets resistance from a cocksure engineer clinging to the hyper-masculine status quo.—
Adjective
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The fox would once have crushed this insolent creature with a swipe of her paw.—
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Beautiful, not perfect; Alex can be rude, insolent, and subject to wild emotional swings and failures of decorum and logic.—
Adjective
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My smart, sassy and silly girl!—
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Other key parts were played by Jean Smart, as Helen, Mare’s sassy mother, Angourie Rice as daughter Siobhan, and an ensemble that looked as if they were born and bred in Delco.—
Adjective
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Some coaches did complain after reporting particularly brazen cases of tampering, pushing for punishments and seeing nothing happen to offenders.—
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Few industries have been as brazen in their capitulation as Big Tech, which has dismantled its content-moderation systems to please the current administration.—
Adjective
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Gemma reluctantly agrees to rebuild her impudent robot in a new body, and the sequel ends with an explosive showdown between Amelia and M3GAN, who nearly dies in a noble attempt to save Gemma and her niece, Cady (Violet McGraw).—
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Fortunately, Snow White’s newfound enlightenment does not deny her the possibility of romance, although princes are now strictly off-limits; her love interest here is a fetchingly impudent bandit, Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), who is leading a scrappy rebellion against the Evil Queen.—
Adjective
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Fran Drescher channeled Fran Fine for her bold and beautiful glam at the 2026 Golden Globes.—
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This simple taupe geometric style peel-and-stick wallpaper is affordable, easy to apply, and looks gorgeous without being too bold or loud.—
Adjective
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Cignetti’s brash, confident demeanor isn’t much different from the Huskies’ head coach’s.—
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Timmy’s Marty promotional tour was loud and brash — viral Zoom videos, Soulja Boy routines in Brazil, standing atop the Sphere in Las Vegas — and had a lot of people wondering if his decision to adopt a Marty Mauser-style braggadocio would ultimately hurt his chances to win over Oscar voters.—
Cite this Entry
“Cocky.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cocky. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
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