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.
To take dishonestly or unfairly, to steal from or cheat out of.
1884, Mark Twain, , Chapter XXXV,...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."
