to smutch

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

To blacken with smoke, soot, or coal.--Webster. 'I have smutched my fingers.' The word is provincial in England, and is found in the old writers. In the United States, as in Scotland, it is pronounced smootch, and is never heard except colloquially.


Thou hast smutched thy nose.--Shakspeare, Winter Evening Tale, I. 2.

Have you mark'd but the fall of snow,

Before the soil hath smutched it.--Ben Jonson, Wanderer.

Related Words