Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a toady, a sycophant, a flatterer.

1897		Worker (Brisbane) 4 Sept. 8/4: While he who ‘crawls’ and ‘runs the cut,’ and lacks a bushman’s pluck, / Is known by men as ‘smoodger,’ while the tar-boys call him ‘suck.’.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 July 15/1: Should the cook (who is, in a measure, responsible) remonstrate he is promptly voted ‘a cow’ or ‘smoodger.’.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Aug. 30/2: A Victorian barrister lately thus derived ‘smooger’ for the benefit of an unsophisticated Bench: Smoo = smooth, ger = jaw; an oily-tongued soundrel.
1905		Worker (Brisbane) 28 Jan. 11/3: What a libel on George Kerr to call him a smoodger. He’s about the last man in the world to smoodge to anyone.
1907		Faringdon Advertiser 6 July 3/2: A ‘smoodger’ is [...] Australian for a sneak or servile member of the gang upon a squatter’s ranch.
1916		Kalgoorlie West. Argus 21 Nov. 32/2: The suggestion of ‘oily smoothness’ in the word ‘smooger’.
1922		E. Dyson Missing Link 🌐 Ch. i: Kid was short for ‘kidder,’ a term that has gone out recently in favour of ‘smoodger,’ and which implies a quality of suave and ingratiating cunning backed by ulterior motives.
1924		G.H. Lawson Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 SMOOGER — One who fawns.
1941		F. Sargeson ‘That Summer’ in Coll. Stories (1965) 157: Don’t make out you’re a smoodger, she said, because you’re not.

2. an informer.

1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Dec. 9/4: A ‘smooger,’ ready to carry information to the governor re fellow-prisoners or warders, was of yore an exception; now he is the rule. The new system encourages the ‘pimp,’ the higher officials of the gaol encourage him; under the old system the spy would receive as his reward ‘seven days dark’.
1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 July 12/3: ‘Smoodger,’ pronounced as written, and signifying a gaol crawler, [is] one who squirms before the authorities.
1909		‘A “Push” Story’ in Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Sept. 17/1: ‘Pimps melted inter th’ mob ’n’ pointed out condemned meat fit f’r removal [...] Prodder sighted a slack-eared smoodger flippin’ 'is finger to th’ clue-collectors’.

3. a confidence trickster, a deceiver.

1907

E. Dyson ‘Two Battlers and a Bear’ in Lone Hand (Sydney) Sept. 489/2: ‘Th’ smooger’s never too sick t’ eat’.

4. a lover, one who is ‘smoodging’.

1911		E. Dyson ‘The Picnic’ in Benno and Some of the Push 10: He went far beyond the range of the smoodgers, seeking the solace of solitude.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 10 July 4/2: Were you practising the [...] Bunnyhug, you smoodger .