Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Irish) to hug and kiss, to caress.

c.1670

c.1670

Purgatorium Hibernicum 15: An so he smugd her up & kist her.

2. to snatch another’s property and run off with it; thus smuggling n.

c.1707

175018001850

1895

c.1707		‘Good Neighbour Why Look Awry’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 169: You wash, you lick, you smug, you trick, / You toss a twire a grin.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 319: When Drapers smugg’d Prentices, / With Exchange Girls most jolly.
1821		W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry III iii: Eh, zounds, Doctor! you’re going to smug the Fiddler, and prig the prewter.
1842		J. Labern ‘The Man For a Family’ Comic Songs 24: They smug the Children’s Bread and Butter.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 Sept. 2/6: The antiquated prigger had attempted to smug his two dillies.
1858		A. Mayhew Paved with Gold 101: If a feller [...] was to behave unhandsome, I’d smug something, and get his ha’pence.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 421/1: After that he used to go ‘smugging’ (running away with) other people’s things.
1879		‘Autobiog. of a Thief’ in Macmillan’s Mag. (London) XL 500: We used to go and smug snowy (steal linen) that was hung out to dry.
1887		‘Dagonet’ ‘A Plank Bed Ballad’ in Referee 12 Feb. n.p.: I smug any snowy I see on the hedge, / And I ain’t above daisies and clobber.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 76: Smugging, stealing.

3. to extinguish.

1805

1805

‘Jeremy Swell, Gent.’ Tailors’ Revolt 17: The landylady knock’d down, and smugg’d her light.

4. to arrest.

1846

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1925

1846		Swell’s Night Guide 59: Yes, but you must stick to your tinpot fakement. You will croak for peck, and be smugged for a stiff ’un.
1850		[as 1846].
1879		‘Autobiog. of a Thief’ in Macmillan’s Mag. (London) XL 502: I went on like this for very nearly a stretch (year) without being smugged (apprehended).
1887		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 16 Aug. 3/3: I claimed two wedge spoons, and was just going up the dancers when a slavey piped the spoons sticking out of my skyrocket and I got smugged.
1896		A. Morrison Child of the Jago (1982) 50: S’pose father ’ll be smugged some day, eh, mother?
1925		E. Jervis 25 Years in Six Prisons 192: If you do, you’re bound to be ‘smugged’ (arrested).

5. to smuggle.

1852

1852

‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 22 Feb. 3/4: Willy Brown [...] smug’d me into ther train stitched up in ther skirts ov his pilot coat.

6. to silence, to ‘hush up’.

1857

1857

Morning Chronicle 3 Oct. n.p.: She wanted a guarantee the case should be smugged, or in other words compromised [F&H].

7. to copy, to cheat.

a.1984

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 1099/1: from ca. 1860; ob.

8. (Irish) to engage in homosexual practices; thus smugging n.

1916

1916

Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 44: - Caught? – What doing? Athy said: – Smugging. All the fellows were silent.