smug v.
1. (Irish) to hug and kiss, to caress.
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.
‘Good Neighbour Why Look Awry’ in Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) IV 169: You wash, you lick, you smug, you trick, / You toss a twire a grin. | ||
in Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 319: When Drapers smugg’d Prentices, / With Exchange Girls most jolly. | ||
Tom and Jerry III iii: Eh, zounds, Doctor! you’re going to smug the Fiddler, and prig the prewter. | ||
Comic Songs 24: They smug the Children’s Bread and Butter. | ‘The Man For a Family’||
Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 Sept. 2/6: The antiquated prigger had attempted to smug his two dillies. | ||
Paved with Gold 101: If a feller [...] was to behave unhandsome, I’d smug something, and get his ha’pence. | ||
(con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor I 421/1: After that he used to go ‘smugging’ (running away with) other people’s things. | ||
‘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. | ||
Referee 12 Feb. n.p.: I smug any snowy I see on the hedge, / And I ain’t above daisies and clobber. | ‘A Plank Bed Ballad’ in||
Aus. Sl. Dict. 76: Smugging, stealing. |
3. to extinguish.
Tailors’ Revolt 17: The landylady knock’d down, and smugg’d her light. |
4. to arrest.
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. | ||
[as 1846]. | ||
‘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). | ||
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. | ||
Child of the Jago (1982) 50: S’pose father ’ll be smugged some day, eh, mother? | ||
25 Years in Six Prisons 192: If you do, you’re bound to be ‘smugged’ (arrested). |
5. to smuggle.
‘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’.
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.
DSUE (1984) 1099/1: from ca. 1860; ob. |
8. (Irish) to engage in homosexual practices; thus smugging n.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 44: - Caught? – What doing? Athy said: – Smugging. All the fellows were silent. |