wiseacre

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The Word of the Day for April 15 is:

wiseacre   \WYZE-ay-ker\   noun
     : one who pretends to knowledge or cleverness; especially : smart aleck

Example sentence:
      A few wiseacres in the audience began heckling the young comedian after 
his first couple of jokes fell flat.

Did you know?
     Given the spelling and definition of "wiseacre," you might guess that the 
word derives from the sense of "wise" meaning "insolent" or "fresh" -- the 
sense that gives us "wisecrack" and "wisenheimer." But, in fact, "wiseacre" 
came to English by a different route; it derived from the Middle Dutch 
"wijssegger" (meaning "soothsayer"), a modification of the Old High German 
"wizzago." "Wiseacre" first appeared in English way back in the late 16th 
century, while the "insolent" sense of "wise" and the words formed from it are 
products of the 19th and 20th centuries. The etymologies of "wiseacre" and 
"wise" are not completely distinct, however; the ancestors of "wiseacre" are 
loosely tied to the same Old English root that gave us "wise."