smart

\ \ [OE] Smart originated as a verb, meaning ‘be painful’. It came from a West Germanic base *smert-, *smart- (source also of German schmerz and Dutch smart ‘pain’), which may go back ultimately to the same Indo-European ancestor that produced Greek smerdnós ‘terrible’ and Latin mordēre ‘bite’ (source of English morsel, remorse, etc). The adjective smart was derived from the verb in the 11th century, and at first meant ‘stinging, painful’. Its modern senses ‘clever’ and ‘neat’ emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries respectively.

\ \ Cf.⇒ MORSEL, REMORSE