"You foreigners are so clever," said a lady to me some years ago.
These few words expressed the lady's contempt and slight disgust for foreigners.
If you look up the word "clever" in any English dictionary, you will find that dictionaries are out of date and mislead you on this point.
According to the "Pocket Oxford Dictionary", for instance, the word means quick and neat in movement ... skilful, talented, ingenious.
All nice adjectives, expressing valuable and estimable characteristics.
A modern Englishman, however, uses the word "clever" in the sense: shrewd, sly, furtive, surreptitious, treacherous, sneaking, crafty, un-English, un-Scottish, un-Welsh.
In England it is bad manners to be clever.
It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.
This pompous, showing-off way of speaking is not permissible in England.
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