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Treated as a singular (i.e., a clever clogs), the colloquial British-English expression clever clogs designates a person who is—or would like to be thought—intelligent or knowledgeable, but is regarded as irritating or smug.
In this expression, the noun clog designates a shoe with a thick wooden sole. Clogs were the workers’ traditional footwear in the British manufacturing districts (cf. the phrase like one o’clock).
The irony of the expression clever clogs lies in the fact that clogs are mere functional pedestrian objects.—Cf. also expressions such as daft as a brush and silly as a wheel, based on the idea that anything is daft that does all the hard work.
The expression clever clogs occurs, for example, in a review of Canal, a London restaurant, by David Ellis, published in The London Standard (London, England) of Thursday 17th July 2025 [page 30, column 2]:
Owner Dominic Hamdy is a savvy operator, with three Crispin branded places, and Bistro Freddie […]. Canal is like them in that it looks good. […]
The setting? On a canal—had you guessed, clever clogs?
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression clever clogs that I have found:
—Preliminary notes: a) Cumbria, in northwestern England, was created in 1974 from the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. b) Cloudsdale is a common surname in Cumbria (cf., below, quotations 1 & 2). c) Lancashire is a county in northwestern England:
1-: From an account of the Kendal Club Coursing Meeting, held at Knipe Scar, in Cumbria, on Wednesday 19th December 1860—account published in The Carlisle Journal (Carlisle, Cumberland, England) of Friday 21st December 1860 [page 8, column 5]—here, Cleverclogs is the name of a greyhound, which seems to indicate that the expression clever clogs was already well established:
Mr Cloudsdale’s Cleverclogs beat Mr Fawcett’s Rushlight.
2-: From Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1866), a novel set in a remote village in Cumbria, by the British novelist and journalist Eliza Lynn Linton (1822-1898) [Vol. 2, chapter 1, page 10]:
She was a staunch believer in all signs and omens, from dreams to spilled salt, and from ghosts to the flight of magpies. She stoutly declared that there had never been a death in her own family without some warning […]. And not only death but misfortune also was thus presaged and foreshown. As when old Cloudsdale came to his trouble—for Aggy was a Cloudsdale by blood—did she not see a small-sized, crooked-backed beggar woman in a red cloak go in to the How by the front door the day before the “bailies” came? […] Though what connection there was between the bailiffs and an old crooked-backed beggar woman in a red cloak Aggy did not attempt to define. She only asserted the fact, and left the explanation to those “clever clogs” who pretended to understand the ins and outs of the gravest mysteries of life: which she was too reverent to do.
3-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Milk in Cocoa Nut’, published in The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser (Preston, Lancashire, England) of Saturday 17th April 1875 [page 6, column 2]:
Sir,—There’s a man been and come somewhere or other either out of Edom, or it may be nearer Blegburn, and getting his self put into the Preston Herald by the name of “Dementa.” […] This member, who may be correctly described as a “hot member” altogether, it seems, from his own account of himself, has had little or nothing to do with Preston; any way, has only just planted his ten toes here, is not a ratepayer, as it would appear; and yet this particularly “hot member” fancies himself qualified to give advice to the Preston people, those who have lived here all their lives, and some of them paying in a single day more in taxes already than “hot member” very probably has per year for his whole sustenance in every way. […] This shadow of a shade of ridiculously abject nothingness; this astounding embodiment of empty nobodiness, united with helpless, harmless innocuousness; a sort of dissolving view, here to-day and gone to-morrow Will-o’-the-wisp, “prefers,” he says, availing himself of the columns of the Herald to advise the Preston ratepayers and representatives of ratepayers about the formation of a School Board […]. He finds out what I intended some such clever clogs should find and point out, in order that I might pivot on it afterwards. He can make no sense of the expression “the recommendation [of the Preston Inspector] set people thinking, and they concluded, if thought desirable—why it would be a sensible thing to let it alone.” If this clever clogs will only add two letters before “thought” and two letters after, namely, “he” and “it,” clever clogs will find it will read bravely. The Inspector would do a wise thing to take a knobstick and knock the clever clogs on the head to settle his “friendly” efforts.
4-: From the following letter to the Editor, published in the Preston Pilot; and Lancashire Advertiser (Preston, Lancashire, England) of Wednesday 5th December 1877 [page 5, column 4]:
Sir,—As your correspondent, “Auditor,” declines to favour your readers with his name, I, as one of them, can only assume that he knows the value of his own windy effusions (by him yclept “literary matter,”) and has not the moral courage to own them, consequently they can only be placed in the category of anonymous correspondence, and valued accordingly. As, however, “Auditor” seems to think himself competent to state facts, interpret them, draw deductions therefrom, and arrive at correct conclusions thereon, and, moreover, to give warnings on any subject (perhaps on all), I would suggest that in future he should adopt as his nom de plume the title of “Wind Bag,” or “Clever Clogs,” in lieu of “Auditor.”—l am, sir, your obedient servant, PAUL CATTERALL.
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