Green’s Dictionary of Slang

tipsy, drunk, thus as nickname.

1773		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 66: She is a wretched piece altogether, a nasty, disagreeable, snuffy, ill-made woman.
1790		J. Wilson ‘Watty & Meg’ in Ancient and Modern Scottish Ballads (1815) II 34: Nasty, gude-for-naething being! / O ye snuffy, drucken [sic] sow! / Bringing wife and weans to ruin, / Drinkiong here wi’ sic a crew.
1818		W. Perry London Guide 79: I got into a lot of about a dozen old women, every one of them more or less snuffy .
1820		Jack Randall’s Diary 6: Trot, somewhat snuffy.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 183: I am afraid some of the vicked fellers have made you half snuffy.
1839		Crim.-Con. Gaz. 21 Dec. 311/1: I saw Snuffy Pike of Holborn Hill.
1849		Sam Sly 20 Jan. 2/1: SAM has no objection to see you a little snuffy, for under the influence of Booth’s fivepenny you are a funny fellow.
a.1856		Burlington Sentinel in Hall (1856) 461: We give a list of a few of the various words and phrases which have been in use, at one time or another, to signify some stage of inebriation: [...] snuffy.
1868		H.L. Williams Black-Eyed Beauty 43: ‘I want none of your lip, Miss Howard!’ returned Brown, who was no more sober than her guests. [...] ‘What do you intend by that, “Snuffy Brown”?’ said Matty.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1886		Wkly Marysville Trib. (OH) 6 Jan. 1/3: ‘Th’ hain’t a man [...] knows how the place fust got inter the Snuffy Snyder family’.
1931		Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 27 June 13/5: Snuffy rerturned. He was trembling and agitated. He got some whiskey.
1947		Boston Globe Mag. 20 July 4.4: Cockeye blinked, ‘Snuffy Parker, you say?’.