Green’s Dictionary of Slang

snide n.

also snyde
[? Ger. aufschneiden, to boast, to brag, to show off, or Ger. schneide, to cut, i.e. the cutting of fake coins]

1. (orig. US, also snider) spec. counterfeit money; thus snide lurk, the passing of counterfeit money; snide shop, an agency that organizes the passing of counterfeit money; snide tickler, a passer of counterfeit money.

[US]New Ulm Rev. (MN) 19 Nov. 1/5: I left my valuables in the hotel safe, and supplied myself with an imposing amount of ‘snide’.
[UK]M. Davitt Leaves from a Prison Diary I 21: The higher and middle ranks of the aristocracy of crime [...] professional swindlers, members of the ‘long firm,’ and dealers in ‘snide’ (base coin).
Cumberalnd Mercury (NSW) 29 Jan. 4/6: Pocohontas thinks sniders more effective than cheques.
[UK]Clarkson & Richardson Police! 320: A passer of bad money ... A smasher, snide tickler.
[UK]cited in Partridge DU (1961) 653/2: snide lurk, the A variant of snide-pitching [...] 1893 [sic] F.W. Carew [...] implied in a criminal’s nickname: ‘Snide Lurk’.
[UK]E. Jervis 25 Years in Six Prisons 150: ‘Bank of Engraving’ notes, which are known to the fraternity as ‘Lills,’ just as base-coin is known as ‘snyde’.
[UK]cited in Partridge DU (1961) 653/2: snide shop. An agency for the marketing of counterfeit money [...] Edgar Wallace The Mind of Mr [J.G.] Reeder, 1925.
[UK]E. Wallace Squeaker (1950) 153: Walter [...] produced five notes and passed them to Bill, who examined them critically. He handed one back. ‘Snide,’ he said.
[UK]V. Davis Gentlemen of the Broad Arrows 105: Very low in the prison social scale is the manufacturer of ‘snide’ (counterfeit coins).
[UK]C. Day Lewis Otterbury Incident 70: ‘It’s probably snide,’ remarked Toppy, taking up the coin, biting it, and bouncing it on the table.
[US]Mad mag. May–June 7: It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.
[UK]J. Gosling Ghost Squad 24: Thieves’ argot, spoken properly, is a foreign language which needs to be learned [...] for instance, ‘snide’ for counterfeit notes and coins.
[UK](con. c.1910) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 80: There ain’t no charge if you’ve only got one false coin. The one that took in the snide had only that on him, so if he was caught it seemed like an accident.

2. a deceptive, fake person; a confidence trickster.

[UK]Sl. Dict. 299: Snide Also used as a substantive, as, ‘He’s a snide,’ though this seems but a contraction of SNIDE ’UN.
[US]Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 4 Dec. 7/3: [He] remarks of Lotta that ‘she’s a daisy, but the old man is a dizzy old snide’.
[UK]Sporting Times 8 Mar. 2/1: After a few had been chucked, there would be a dearth of the snide.
[US]E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 61: snide, n. A mean contemptible fellow.
[US]M.G. Hayden ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 201: snide, a mean, dishonest person. ‘That big snide! I’ll never trade with him again.’ (Thorn.).
[US]G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 418: Snide. A mean person, a cheapskate. Short-change artist.
[US](con. 1910s) J. Thompson Heed the Thunder (1994) 49: His voice was rich and convincing. He was far from being a snide.
[SA]J. Yates-Benyon Weak and the Wicked 120: Chiefie’s a damn snide who’s gotta be clocked.
[UK]N. ‘Razor’ Smith A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 47: The burglary squad, who I considered snides and bullies of the first order.
[UK]J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 954: One snide cheapjoked that he should get a pair of glasses to signal his new intellectualis.

3. something worthless.

[US]N.Y. Times 18 July 8/1: I’ve known many a better job done in old times than [the] one [a burglary] in Mangin street, which is altogether a ‘snide’.

4. worthless goods, touted as valuable; also attrib.

[Aus]Truth (Sydney) 24 June 1/4: [of stocks] There’s Scrip, who deals in wild-cat mines, / [...] / Made half a million on those lines, / An eminent ’snide’ broker.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Aug. 26/4: It was a hard, cold time for the ‘snide’ salesman and his confederates who purchased trinkets at 10 times their value merely to encourage the mugs to bid up.

5. (UK Und.) anything counterfeit.

Decatur Dly Republican (IL) 29 May 6/1: It is sparkling and brilliant to look at, but the close observer [...] it is nothing but snide.
[US]E. Nye Forty Liars (1888) 113: If people turn up their noses at your [mining] claim then, and say it is a snide [...] you can tell them that they are clear off, and that you have salted your claim.
[US]W. Irwin Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum VI n.p.: I’m wise his diamond ring’s a cut-glass snide.
[Aus]Sun. Times (Perth, WA) 29 Oct. 35/7: We’ve heard of Cleopatra’s pearl that lost old Mark the world - / It might have been a ‘snide’ that caused him to be outward hurled.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[UK]D. Powis Signs of Crime 201: Snide Anything worthless, unpleasant or counterfeit.
[UK](con. 1950s–60s) in G. Tremlett Little Legs 12: The snide, the wrong ’un, tucked away inside.

6. (orig. S.Afr.) imitation diamonds, fake gold, platinum and silver jewellery.

[UK](con. 1979) N. ‘Razor’ Smith A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 210: We did a bit of burglary [...] and sold a lot of ‘snide’ to keep ourselves in beer, fags and clothes. [...] Snide is the name for fake jewellery.

In compounds

snide and shine (n.) [sheeny n. (1)]

an East End Jew.

[UK]J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 228/1: Snide and shine (E. London). General description of the common Jews of the East of London by their Christian brethren. Both words bear the same meaning, but taken together are most emphatic.
Morn. Call (Allentown, PA) 16 Oct. 159/3: The Talmud is written without punctuation or vowels [...] The process could be distracting to someone tracing the origins of the term ‘snide and shine’.
snide pitcher (n.) (also snide pusher, snyde-pitcher) [pitch v. (3)/pusher n. (3d)]

one who passes bad money; thus snide pitching n., passing counterfeit money.

[[UK]Kentish Gaz. 22 Dec. 3/1: He [i.e. the swagsman] carries all the base money, together with all the small purchases which the ‘pitcher’ makes in order to get rid of the ‘snide’].
[UK]Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 6/2: Here are to be found ‘mobs’ of ‘chat-pitchers,’ ‘cly-fakers,’ ‘bursters,’ ‘snyde-pitchers’ (‘snyde,’ bad money), ‘picking-up mobs’ and their ‘blokes’, etc., etc.
[UK]Buckingham Advertiser 15 Jan. 4/3: The far greater number [...] were of inferior magnitude, such as ‘bluey-hunters,’ ‘snide pitchers’ and ordinary ‘prigs’.
[UK] ‘Autobiog. of a Thief’ in Macmillan’s Mag. (London) XL 502: The following people used to go in there [i.e. an underworld public house] — toy-getters (watch-stealers), magsmen (confidence-trick men), men at the mace (sham loan offices), broadsmen (card-sharpers), peter-claimers (box-stealers), busters and screwsmen (burglars), snide-pitchers (utterers of false coin), men at the duff (passing false jewellery), welshers (turf-swindlers), and skittle sharps.
[UK]M. Davitt Leaves from a Prison Diary I 32: Professional swindlers, members of the ‘long firm,’ and utterers of base coin, or ‘snide pitchers’. [Ibid.] 154: ‘Pitch the snide, or put your duke in his fob.’.
Sth Wales Dly News 12 Jan. n.p.: A ‘snide-pitcher’ [is] a man who ‘pitches’ or passes ‘snide’ or counterfeit money.
[UK]Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 232: A snide-pusher had been brought to book for tendering pewter money in a public house.
[Scot]Glasgow Herald 15 July 9/5: ‘The Snide Pitcher’ The Story of a Coiner.
[Aus]Argus (Melbourne) 20 Sept. 6/4: The man who utters it [...] may be either a boodle carrier, a snide-pitcher, or a shovel pitcher while the operation itself is to pitch or to shove queer.
[UK]Marvel 10 Mar. 173: He’s a snide-pusher!
[UK]Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 10: Snide pitching: Uttering counterfeit coin.
[UK](con. c.1910) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 75: I turned to snide-pitching – i.e. changing false money.
snidesman (n.) (also snideman, snider) [sfx -man]

one who makes or passes counterfeit coins.

[UK]Clarkson & Richardson Police! 322: Coiners ... Bit-makers, snidemen, moulders.
[UK]A. Morrison Child of the Jago (1982) 95: Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of such dippers —such pickpockets — as could dress well, welshers and snidesmen.
[UK]E. Pugh Spoilers 66: Remember, Chick, ’ow they used to tumble out when the tiggies made a raid for a ’ot poge-hunter or snidesman.
[UK]E. Pugh City Of The World 268: It may help to clear the course a bit if I explain to your innocencey just what smashers and sniders and snidesmen are. A smasher, let me tell you, then, is a coiner – a yob that manufactures spurious money. And a snider is the party that foists the flash on people [...] Sometimes, however, the snider ain’t a man at all, but a woman.
[Aus]E. Pugh in Advertiser (Adelaide) 12 Apr. 24/8: ‘Snidesman’ means a passer of bad coin.
[UK]Framlingham Wkly News 8 Dec. 3/7: Thieves’ Dialect [...] ‘Snider’ or ‘snidesman’ [is] a passer of counterfeit coin.

In phrases

drop the snide (v.)

(UK und.) to pass on counterfeit money.

[UK]Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 4: Dropping the snide: Uttering base coin.
on the snide (adv.)

surreptitiously, on the sly.

[Aus]Sun. Times (Perth) 17 Sept. 1/4: One of the dailies’ crank letter writers does a bit on the snide.
[Scot](con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 198: Ah waited oan the snide outside but, duckin behind a motor.