snazzy

English

Etymology

Unknown but perhaps a blend of snappy +‎ jazzy, or from Irish snas (“polish; good appearance”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsnæzi/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Adjective

snazzy (comparative snazzier, superlative snazziest)

1. (informal) Elegant in manner of dress; stylish, modern or appealing in appearance; flashy.

   Synonyms: dapper, elegant, pizazzy, smart, cool

   Antonyms: inelegant, scruffy, sloppy

   a snazzy dresser

   • 2000 September 23, Alev Aktar, “TAILOR MADE GOES: Fashion week closes with Calvin, Donna and Vera”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 8 Jan. 2009:

     One particularly snazzy outfit consisted of vertically striped pants paired with a horizontally striped and sequined top.

   • 2022 September 21, Brendan Rice, “Ready for inspection”, in RAIL, number 966, page 61:

     Their interiors will also be repainted, while the non-instrumented area of the coach, which contains only a few seats, will be made to "look snazzy".

2. (informal) Excellent; clever, ingenious, or adept in behavior, operation, or execution.

   Synonyms: (informal) cool, (informal) nifty, smart

   Antonyms: (coarse slang) crappy, duff, (informal, especially US) lame, (informal) naff, (informal) rubbishy

   • 1938 April 17, Jane Murdock, “Friday Afternoon Dances”, in Washington Post, page PY8:

     Those Friday afternoon dances in the gym are really snazzy.

   • 2009 January 8, Suzanne Choney, “Palm looks to regain place in smartphone race”, in msnbc.com‎^[1], archived from the original on 2009-01-21:

     Of those migrating to the iPhone from other devices, a good number of them are former Treo users who found Apple's device to be a souped-up, snazzier and even easier-to-use version of the Treo.

Related terms

Terms which are etymologically related to "snazzy"

• snazzily
• snazziness
• snazztastic
• snazz up

Translations

elegantly dressed, stylish, flashy

• Finnish: tyylikäs (fi)
• German: schick (de)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: snasen

• Russian: шика́рный (ru) (šikárnyj), бро́ский (ru) (bróskij)
• Swedish: tjusig (sv)
• Turkish: şık (tr)

excellent, clever, ingenious, adept

• Finnish: tyylikäs (fi), näyttävä (fi)

Further reading

• “snazzy”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “snazzy”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.