[ad. Du. smous Jew, usurer, supposed to be the same word as G. dial. schmus talk, patter, ad. Jewish schmuoss, Heb. sh’mūsōth tales, news, the reference being to the persuasive eloquence of Jewish pedlars. Cf. SMOUCH sb.2]
† 1. slang. A Jew. Obs.
1705. trans. Bosman’s Guinea, 190. They are as Impertinent and Noisie as the Smouse or German Jews at their Synagogue at Amsterdam.
1761. Colman, Genius, Prose on Sev. Occas. (1787), I. 35. [Earring-] bobs or drops…, which also the insinuating Smouse soon provided for her.
1786. Macklin, Man of World, II. 30. I honour the smouse—ha! ha! ha! it was devilish clever—the Jew distilling the Beeshop’s brains.
2. S. African. An itinerant trader. Also attrib.
1850. R. G. Cumming, Hunter’s Life S. Africa (1902), 13/2. Here we met a ‘smouse,’ or trader, coming down the country.
1883. Olive Schreiner, Story Afr. Farm, II. iii. A spray of orange-blossom which she had bought from a smouse.
1890. Eng. Illustr. Mag., Nov., 112. I … did a little in the ‘smouse’ line.
Hence Smousing vbl. sb. Also Smouser.
c. 1876. Sir B. Frere, in J. E. Carlyle, S. Africa & Mission Fields (1878), 103. This process of smousing, as it is termed in local slang.
1903. E. Glanville, Diamond Seekers, 225. We are smousers (traders), said Amos.
