Definition of "smutch"
smutch
verb
third-person singular simple present smutches, present participle smutching, simple past and past participle smutched
Quotations
Why, that’s my bawcock. What, hast smutch’d thy nose?They say it is a copy out of mine.
c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene ii]
noun
plural smutches
Quotations
As let a man sticke a Candle to a stone wall, though the Candle do not burne through it, yet it will leaue a shrewd smutch behind it, soyling the wall, so as it will not easily be wyped out. Thus it is with tentations, though they doe not all the mischiefe they would and might doe, they will yet be sure to leaue an impression of filth and staines behinde them.
1629, John Smith, “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer”, in Essex doue, presenting the world with a few of her oliue branches, London: George Edwardes, page 124