smouch

English

Etymology 1

Variant of smooch.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /smuːt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

smouch (plural smouches)

1. (US) Alternative form of smooch (“kiss”)

Verb

smouch (third-person singular simple present smouches, present participle smouching, simple past and past participle smouched)

1. (US) Alternative form of smooch (“kiss”)
   • 1583, Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses:

     For what kissing and bussing, what Smouching and slabbering one of another, what filthie groping and uncleane handling is not practiced in those dancings

Etymology 2

Probably a variant of smutch.

Noun

smouch (plural smouches)

1. Alternative form of smutch (“a stain or smudge”)
   • 1866, Henry Ward Beecher, 595 Pulpit Pungencies, page 263:

     Suppose an artist, after having completed such a picture, in a moment of intoxication, goes into his studio, takes his brush, dips it into black paint, and applies it thereto. Only one smouch and the work of months is destroyed!

   • 1896, Cairns Collection of American Women Writers, Harper's new monthly magazine, volume 93, page 618:

     […] and on her breast a baby, wet as she, smiling and cooing, but with a great crimson smouch on its tiny shoulder.

Verb

smouch (third-person singular simple present smouches, present participle smouching, simple past and past participle smouched)

1. Alternative form of smutch (“to stain or smudge”)

Etymology 3

Perhaps compare mooch.

Verb

smouch (third-person singular simple present smouches, present participle smouching, simple past and past participle smouched)

1. To take dishonestly or unfairly, to steal from or cheat out of.
   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 366:

     […] So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives."
     "Smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of."

Etymology 4

Noun

smouch (plural smouches)

1. Alternative form of smous

Anagrams

• hocums, so much