smart money
- noun
- Formal
:
daños punitivos
- The court awarded smart money to the plaintiff to punish the company's intentional misconduct.
Examples
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In addition to actual losses, the jury decided on a significant amount of smart money.
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The judge explained that smart money serves as a warning to others who might act maliciously.
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The judge awarded smart money to the victims of the fraud.
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In this case, the smart money is crucial for justice.
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The court granted the plaintiff smart money to deter the defendant's future misconduct.
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To punish the company for its negligence, the judge awarded smart money on top of the damages.
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The jury's decision to give smart money shows the importance of holding wrongdoers accountable.
Synonyms
26
8.8
Money a court orders someone to pay that is more than payment for a loss to punish deliberate harmful acts
Money a court gives to punish someone for causing serious harm and to stop others
How Punitive
- Formal
- Specialized
5
6.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'punitive damages' is a specialized, legal sense that cannot be derived from 'smart' (clever) + 'money' (currency); a B1 learner who knows the parts would not predict punishment-awarding damages. The phrase is idiomatic/specialized (and even other common senses like ‘money bet by informed investors’ are metaphorical), so its meaning is not transparently compositional.
Etymology
One idea is that smart money comes from an older meaning of 'smart' that meant 'to hurt' or 'sting'. Money given to punish someone was called 'smart money', so the phrase came to mean money added to 'punish' bad behaviour, like modern punitive damages.