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smoke-filled room

[smohk-fild, -fild]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

a place, as a hotel room, for conducting secret negotiations, effecting compromises, devising strategy, etc.

smoke-filled room

A popular expression used to describe a place where the political wheeling and dealing of machine bosses (see machine politics) is conducted. The image originated during the Republican presidential nominating convention of 1920, in which Warren G. Harding emerged as a dark horse candidate.

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Word History and Origins

Origin of smoke-filled room¹

First recorded in 1915–20

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

“Even though these landlords are not getting together in the proverbial smoke-filled room and saying, ‘We all need to raise our rents by $100,’ they’re colluding by using the same software that aggregates their data,” he said.

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We even have the cliched “smoke-filled room” where this used to happen.

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When officers enter the cell, they can be seen wrestling Zumwalt to the floor in the smoke-filled room.

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For decades during the 1900s the process was dominated by state and local party bosses, giving rise to the notion of the “smoke-filled room,” where top leaders were said to huddle secretly to determine their presidential candidate.

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A rural Ohio newspaperman who had risen to U.S. senator, Harding was a reluctant compromise candidate during the 1920 Republican convention in Chicago, emerging from a proverbially smoke-filled room.

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