Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) an experience, a ‘flavour’; sufficiency.

1865		in T.P. Lowry Stories the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell (1994) 39: There aren’t any girls in this country except those that is strictly on the fuck for $5 a go. I take a snootful about once a month.
1919		Van Loan ‘Piute vs. Piute’ in Score by Innings (2004) 307: You have come in from Eureka County to get a snootful of summer education.
1976		S.J. Perelman letter 18 Oct. in Crowther Don’t Tread on Me (1987) 318: I now have a snootful about this subject.
1977		Rocky Mt Teleg. (CA) 13 Sept. 14/4: As Tiger Johnson said, ‘It’s a “snootful” playing in the AFC Central’.

2. (US, also snooter) a measure or quantity of an alcoholic drunk, usu. excessive; thus a state of drunkenness.

1898		Sun. Inter Ocean (Chicago) 6 Mar. 33/4: He suck a snootful froo de nozzle.
1908		implied in have a snootful
1919		A. Baer Two & Three 4 Nov. [synd. col.] One snooter used to make this baby sicker than a Cook’s tourist on the second day out.
1928		Phila. Eve. Bulletin 5 Oct. 40/5: Here are a few more terms and definitions from the ‘Racket’ vocabulary: [...] ‘snootful,’ a large quantity of drafts of intoxicating liquor.
1934		Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves 132: He is just a plain, ordinary poop and needs a snootful as badly as ever man did.
1945		R.L. Bellem ‘Coffin for a Coward’ in Hollywood Detective Dec. 🌐 Somebody butched him while he was sleeping off a snootful.
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 57: You take your snootful, and you go out like a lamb.
1968		W.S. Hoffman Loser 101: ‘The son of a gun never showed. He had a snootful when he left so I figure he forgot where I was’.
1971		Wodehouse Much Obliged, Jeeves 91: At the very moment when Jeeves and I were sipping our snootfuls.
1981		S. King Cujo (1982) 220: You don’t need a one-legged cameraman with a snootful of beer to tell you where the bear shat in the buckwheat.
2000		B. Wiprud Sleep with the Fishes 74: Here you come with your truck and a snootful.

3. (US) as sense 1 but pertaining to neither drink nor drugs.

1976

Honolulu Star Bulletin (HI) 18 July E2/2: With a snootful of chocolate, kids can ride the attractions at Hershey Park.

4. a measure of a drug, usu. for inhalation.

1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 129: Barrio punks with switchblades and a snootful of angel dust.
1994		J. Wambaugh Finnegan’s Week 97: A lot of workers ended up with a snootful of acid and cyanide fumes.