Word.ws English Dictionary

smatter-hauling

smatter-hauling noun: the theft of handkerchiefs.

Noun

smatter-hauling (uncountable)

  1. (UK, obsolete, slang) The theft of handkerchiefs.
    • At the end of the two years and a half I got into the way of forged Bank-of-England notes. A man I knew in the course of business, said, ‘I would cut that game of ‘smatter-hauling,’ (stealing handkerchiefs), and do a little soft,’ (pass bad notes).1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861

Questions about smatter-hauling

What does smatter-hauling mean?
Smatter-hauling means the theft of handkerchiefs.
What part of speech is smatter-hauling?
Smatter-hauling is a noun.

Words near smatter-hauling in the dictionary

  1. smatchet
  2. smatchets
  3. smatching
  4. Smath
  5. smatter
  6. smatter-hauling
  7. smattered
  8. smatterer
  9. smatterers
  10. smatterest
  11. smattereth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: smatter-hauling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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