smousing, verbal noun

/ˈsməʊsɪŋ/
Origin:
From smous verb.
Peddling; itinerant trading; illicit trading or smuggling; also called smouching, see smouch verb. Also attributive.
1856 J. & M. Churchill Merchant Family in Natal (1979) 79We were about a week in trading amongst the farmers, and for the first time I saw what ‘smousing’ was.
1876 T. Stubbs Reminiscences. I. 51Having given up Kurveying — I thought a Smousing trip might pay, I got a waggon load of goods from W.R. Thompson at 6 Months Credit, and started.
1880 S.W. Silver & Co.’s Handbk to S. Afr. 227The traffic still goes on, for ostrich-farming has not, as yet, made interior smousing unprofitable. The departure of a great trader with his train of, perhaps, half-a-dozen waggons, all of them gaily painted and cosily covered in with snow-white canvas, is an event in some Cape towns.
1886 G.A. Farini Through Kalahari Desert 328They have large farms now and thousands of sheep and cattle, and I might have been like them, but I fancied smousing (trading), and in two years I lost all I had.
1897 ‘F. Macnab’ On Veldt & Farm 271Smuggling, or, as the kaffirs term it ‘smousing’, in brandy was carried on.
1968 J.T. McNish Rd to El Dorado 15Schalk van Niekerk..a poor farmer, at times reduced to setting out on what was then known as a ‘smousing’ trip to make ends meet.
1984 M. Mthethwa in Frontline July 29Smousing is an illegal practice and, consequently, gives practitionaers a false bravado in that they defy the law in their own backyard.
Peddling; itinerant trading; illicit trading or smuggling; also called smouching, see smouch verb. Also attributive.
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smouser, nounn.snaaks, adjectiveadj.
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