Smollett

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Tobias Smollett was an eighteenth-century Scottish novelist known for picaresque satirical works such as Roderick Random
2. A surname borne by Tobias Smollett, the Scottish author of eighteenth-century picaresque novels and a translator and historian
3. The name of Tobias Smollett, a Scottish writer of the 1700s famous for satirical fiction like The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Etymology: Tobias Smollett, the eighteenth-century Scottish novelist, is the source here, and his name became a common noun in the sense of a pun or a figure. The surname itself is Scottish, and the novelist is the person whose name gives the word its meaning. The word is best known in the sense of a snub or a sharp pun? Careful: the commonly recorded usage is "smollett" as a term for a bitter or mocking remark, and Smollett's reputation for savage satire and quarrelsome criticism made his name a byword for it. Because the tradition is not well documented in standard references, the exact details of how the usage spread are uncertain, and it is best understood as a sense of his name used to label his style rather than a settled coinage.