the sb. or verb-stem used in combs., as sneak-boat, U.S. a boat by which one may readily move or approach unobserved; esp. a sneak-box; sneak-box, U.S. a small, flat, shallow boat used in wild-fowl shooting, and when in use masked with brush or weeds; sneak-current, Electr. current that escapes or strays owing to leakage or imperfect insulation (1904 in Cent. Dict. Suppl.); sneak-pasty a., insidious, sneaky; sneak-shooting, the shooting of wild-fowl from a sneak-boat (Cent. Dict.); sneak-thief (orig. U.S.), one who steals or thieves by sneaking into houses through open or unfastened doors or windows; hence sneak-thieving vbl. sb.
1882. D. Kemp, Yacht Sailing, xvi. (1884), 258. The home of the *sneak-boat, or sneak box, or devil’s coffin, as the contrivance is indifferently termed, is Barnegat Bay.
1889. Bucknill, Submarine Mines, 232. The Howell [torpedo] … is inferior only as an arm for a sneak boat, or for a vessel attempting to run a blockade.
1879. N. H. Bishop, 4 Months in Sneak-Box (1880), 1. The comical-looking … Barnegat *sneak-box, or duck-boat.
1884. Knight, Dict. Mech., Suppl. 826/2. The New Jersey sneak box is from 12′ to 14′ in length.
1681. T. Flatman, Heraclitus Ridens, No. 15 (1713), I. 101. Some creeping *Sneakpasty Schismatick would have informed against you.
1877. Talmage, Serm., 58. The meanest *sneak-thief that comes up … at the Tomb Court.
1884. Century Mag., March, 653/2. The offenses are nearly all trivial, most of them being petty larceny and *sneak-thieving.
