Meaning
A private gathering of party bosses, power brokers, or executives where decisions are made in secret and later presented as done deals - above all the choosing of a candidate without a public vote. The phrase implies backroom dealing of questionable legitimacy: the rank and file were never in the room. Inherently critical - it asserts that a decision lacked open process - so avoid it for merely private meetings; standard in political journalism and commentary. Regional use: American English; widely understood.
Origin
The image comes from press coverage of the deadlocked 1920 Republican National Convention in Chicago. After many indecisive ballots, the junior senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding, was chosen - legend has it, in a private late-night meeting of party leaders in a suite of the Blackstone Hotel, displacing the front-runners Leonard Wood, Frank Lowden, and Hiram Johnson. The United Press reporter Raymond Clapper described the rumors of that meeting, and Collins's idiom dictionary confirms the phrase was first used of that Blackstone Hotel suite where Harding was chosen in 1920. There was nothing new about the practice: a report on Boston's 1763 caucus described men who 'smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the garret to the other'. Farlex and Wiktionary now define the phrase for any secret conclave of the powerful, and it survives even in a largely smoke-free political culture.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- in a smoke-filled room
- smoke-filled room
- smoke-filled rooms
Usage Examples
- No smoke-filled room picked the new leader this time; members voted online over three open rounds.
- The nomination was supposed to be settled in a smoke-filled room, but someone leaked the guest list to a columnist.
- Purists still grumble that conference venues, not smoke-filled rooms, now decide the party's candidate.