[Related to SMUDGE v.1 Cf. the earlier SMUTCH sb., to which this has the same correspondence as sludge to slutch.]
1. A dirty mark or stain, esp. such as is caused by a smear or by trying to rub out a previous mark.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 596. A long sooty smudge upon the lining of my coach.
1846. D. Jerrold, Mrs. Caudle, xviii. And you think I didn’t see the smudges of court plaster about her face?
1862. Lytton, Str. Story, II. 95. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle away,… leaving but an undistinguishable smudge behind.
1874. Burnand, My Time, vi. 48. Like a smudge from a lead pencil.
fig. 1891. T. Hardy, Tess, I. xiv. 182. The smudge which Tess had set upon that nobility.
b. transf. A blurred indistinct mass or area.
1871. Miss Mulock, Fair France, 3. Mixing earth and sky in one settled ‘smudge.’
1885. Manch. Exam., 11 June, 57. Wales and Scotland [in common maps] are simply smudges of mountains.
2. A smeary condition, substance, etc.; the result of smearing or dirtying.
1830. Marryat, King’s Own, II. vi. 90. The master … finds one day that his sextant case is all of a smudge.
1837. Whittock, Bk. Trades (1842), 260. The oil, the grease and consequent ‘smudge’ incur a good portion of uncleanness.
1864. Soc. Sci. Rev., 165. The countryman who … declared that it [a picture] was nothing but ‘smudge.’
b. techn. The scum of paint.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Builder, 411. The scum is called smudge, and is used for outside work.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., IV. 207/1. Smudge, which consists of the refuse from paint and varnish pots, and therefore contains a number of fatty, oily substances.
3. Very small coal; fine slack, coal dust.
1883. in Gresley, Gloss. Coal-mining, 228.
1890. Pall Mall Gaz., 4 Oct., 5/1. Small coal, such as smudge and slack, are plentiful.
4. attrib. and Comb., as smudge-faced, -pot; also smudge-coal, blind-coal, stone-coal (Imperial Dict., 1882).
1883. Fortn. Rev., 1 Sept., 455. Huge poles … smeared over by a property-man with a smudge-pot.
1891. H. Herman, His Angel, v. 96. A grimy, smudge-faced, half-ragged urchin.
