"too clever by half" meaning in English

See too clever by half in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adjective

Audio: En-au-too clever by half.ogg
Head templates: {{head|en|adjective|head=too clever by half}} too clever by half
  1. (idiomatic, of a person, plan, theory, etc.) Shrewd but flawed by overthinking or excessive complexity, with a resulting tendency to be unreliable or unsuccessful. Tags: idiomatic, usually Translations (very clever, but flawed): oberschlau (German), eine Schnapsidee haben (German)
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          "ref": "1890, Henry James, chapter 47, in The Tragic Muse:",
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          "ref": "2011 April 28, David Prosser, “Did Barclays' own executives see the bank coming?”, in The Independent:",
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          "ref": "2017 October 20, Katharine Murphy, “At least for once, don't let politicking kill off a workable energy policy”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
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          "code": "de",
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          "sense": "very clever, but flawed",
          "word": "oberschlau"
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          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "very clever, but flawed",
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      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "very clever, but flawed",
      "word": "oberschlau"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "very clever, but flawed",
      "word": "eine Schnapsidee haben"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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