Calling someone smart has little meaning, because it means different things in different contexts and one persons smart may not even be considered smart at all

Calling someone smart has little meaning, because it means different things in different contexts and one persons smart may not even be considered smart at all to others. A lot of it is age related to, being good at multiplication in the first grade is going to get you called smart, later in life it's just assumed. Also as a related example people confuse memorization with smarts, here in Australia times tables are generally taught up to 12*12, if a kid if very fast at these but falls over once the number goes over 12 they have just put a lot of time into memorization without picking up the principles properly.