Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to arrest; thus snaffled adj., arrested.

1575		‘Mr. S’ Gammer Gurton’s Needle in Whitworth (1997) IV iv: Master Bailey, I trow, […] Will snaffle these murderers.
1797		M. Leeson Memoirs (1995) III 205: This buck was snaffled by two Catchpoles.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 220: snaffled arrested, ‘pulled up,’ ? so termed from a kind of horse’s bit called a snaffle.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1881		Newcastle Courant 2 Dec. 6/6: Nell got snaffled for five years.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 77: Snaffled, arrested.
1903		Lancs. Eve. Post 7 Jan. 5/7: He ran after the shark and snaffled him.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 261: Snaffled, To Be: To be caught.

2. to steal; thus as n., an act of stealing.

1608		Dekker Lanthorne and Candle-Light Ch. 7: How the Snaffle is putte on.
1724		‘Frisky Moll’s Song’ in J. Thurmond Harlequin Sheppard 22: From Priggs that snaffle the Prancers strong, / To you of the Peter Lay, / I pray now listen a while to my song, / How my Boman he kick’d away.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. n.p.: To snaffle, to steal, to rob, to purloin.
1754		G. Stevens ‘A Cant Song’ Muses Delight 177: While I mill’d his mazzard she snaffl’d his poll.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1899		Kipling ‘Slaves of the Lamp — Part II’ in Complete Stalky & Co. (1987) 286: They finished off the men, and snaffled the sheep and as much grain as they could carry.
1919		W.H. Downing Digger Dialects 46: snavvle (vb.) — To take by stealth; to steal; to capture.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 16: I know all about those things that were stolen. It was Meadowes, my man, who pinched them. I caught him snaffling my silk socks.
1933		M. Marshall Tramp-Royal on the Toby 14: Some blushing dagoes half-inched my dough and snaffled my sea-book.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 8: Stealing or appropriating [...] snaffle.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 84: I seen ya snaffle that bayonet from the Q.M. store, doctor it up so it looked old and sell it to that old sheila as the one Jacka won his V.C. with in the last blue.
1959		G. Slatter Gun in My Hand 221: Mick wanted to have a look-see. Snaffle a few eggs or something.
1977		Eve. Standard 17 Aug. 13: My dad snaffled some glossy stills of Elvis from his newspaper office.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 297: The two reams of copy paper and two hundred envelopes he’d inexplicably snaffled from the unoccupied hotel reception last night.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘The only piece she could snaffle was a bird gun’.

3. to grab, to take hold of; to pilfer (and as such seen as less immoral than stealing).

1906		implied in snaffler n.1 (3)
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 71: I snaffled three excellent cats all in the first hour.
1930		A.R.D. Fairburn letter 3 Dec. in Edmond Letters (1981) 43: Try to snaffle a few.
1958		D. Stivens Scholarly Mouse and other Tales 1: ‘Excuse me, but I forgot this,’ he said, snaffling the bone and bolting outside again.
1961		R.S. Close With Hooves of Brass 87: ‘Eddie [...] complained that Mrs. Mitchell was sneaking a handful of apricots out of the bag every time she came in, and if I didn’t sew it up, a couple of more visits and she’d have snaffled the lot’.
1971		K. Willey Boss Drover 46: The travelling combo was always on the lookout to snaffle somebody else’s lubra.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 48: Snaffle: To pinch or thieve but in a minor and harmless fashion. One might snaffle a sanger from a buffet table, but one definitely steals a full bottle of Scotch.
1989		Gaz. (Montreal) 8 Oct. 36/1: I snaffled a cookie out of the cookie jar.
1993		I. Welsh Trainspotting 22: Mikey snaffles the notes and [...] produces two white capsules.
2000		Guardian Guide 8–14 Jan. 52: ‘I’ve been trying to cut down,’ he explains to a rival coke-dealer, before snaffling up another line.