smous
smous noun: a peddler.
Noun
smous (plural smouses)
- A peddler.
- A Jew from Germany or Eastern Europe.
Verb
smous (third-person singular simple present smouses, present participle smousing, simple past and past participle smoused)
- To go about selling goods, as an itinerant peddler.
- Not only South Africans, White and Black, but fortune hunters from Europe and America, Indian and Chinese labourers and traders, and Jews from the ghettoes (sic) and shtetles of Eastern Europe, who had come to 'smous' […]2021, Anne Fuchs, Playing the Market, page 49
Forms of smous
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | smouses |
| alternative form | smaus |
| alternative form | smause |
| alternative form | smouse |
| alternative form | smouch |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | smouses |
| present participle | smousing |
| past participle | smoused |
| past | smoused |
Origin of smous
Borrowed from Afrikaans smous or Dutch smous, from a Yiddish word whose precise origin is uncertain. One theory is that it derives from Yiddish משה (moyshe, “Moses”), pronounced moushe in Western Yiddish, from Hebrew מֹשֶׁה (moshé, “Moses”).
Questions about smous
- What does smous mean?
- Smous means a peddler.
- What part of speech is smous?
- Smous can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of smous?
- The plural of smous is smouses.
Words near smous in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: smous (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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Cite this entry: “smous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.