sneak-comb. form

1850 Laws Gen. Assembly Maryland c. 305 §1 Any person or persons [who] shall use any..sink boats, sneak boats,..or floats,..shall be subject to a fine.

1882 D. Kemp Man. Yacht & Boat Sailing (1884) xvi. 258 The home of the sneak-boat, or sneak box, or devil's coffin, as the contrivance is indifferently termed, is Barnegat Bay.

1889 J. T. Bucknill Submarine Mines 232 The Howell [torpedo]..is inferior only as an arm for a sneak boat, or for a vessel attempting to run a blockade.

1879 N. H. Bishop Four Months in Sneak-box (1880) 1 The comical-looking..Barnegat sneak-box, or duck-boat.

a1884 E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. Suppl. 826/2 The New Jersey sneak box is from 12′ to 14′ in length.

1929 G. W. Deeping Roper's Row xxx. § 1 A little sneak-boy in the hall [sc. to warn idling house-painters].

1899 K. B. Miller Amer. Telephone Pract. xxiii. 275 It frequently happens..that a very small current..will not be sufficient to blow the fuse... These currents are very appropriately termed ‘sneak currents’.

1934 A. L. Albert Electr. Communication xii. 325 Currents slightly in excess of the normal operating values..are often called ‘sneak’ currents.

1930 Times Lit. Suppl. 9 Jan. 18/1 Creevey..was in fact (if a very modern term may be forgiven because it is so apt) a ‘sneak-guest’.

1958 Listener 18 Dec. 1045/1 He [sc. Boswell] was regarded in society as something of a ‘sneak guest’.

1878 E. B. Tuttle Border Tales 45 By sneak~hunting, one man can kill a whole band of elk.

1980 Outdoor Life (U.S.) Oct. (Northeast ed.) 84/3 Sneak hunting is a difficult and time-consuming sport.

1681 Heraclitus Ridens 10 May 2/1 Some creeping Sneakpasty Schismatick would have informed against you.

1938 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 28 Nov. 1/6 A double~barreled, two-blizzard ‘sneak’ pre-view of the 1938 edition of winter.

1939 Chambers's Jrnl. Nov. 858/1 In America, pre-views, frequently called ‘sneak pre-views’, have always been allowed.

1949 Sun (Baltimore) 28 Jan. 13/4 (advt.) Sneak preview—tonight at 11.40 p.m. Even though the producers say we mustn't tell—we can hint it's..one of the funniest comedies you've ever seen!

1952 Art Digest 15 Sept. 5/1 Sneak Preview. On the theory that our readers like to know in advance about important art events, we summarize..the 1952–53 season.

1960 Sunday Express 18 Dec. 9/3 Paris-bound passengers were given a sneak preview of Britain's ‘pennyfarthing’ airliner, the Vickers Vanguard.

1972 Guardian 24 May 13/7 The old-established Oregon primary..served as a sneak preview of the multimillion dollar Californian entertainment.

1975 New Yorker 22 Dec. 31/2 Our pal..delights in opportunities to see things in advance, so he was easily persuaded last week to accept our invitation to sneak-preview the new open-air observation platform twelve feet above the roof.

1980 Times Lit. Suppl. 12 Sept. 990/2 This selection brings together poems from all five of her [sc. P. Beer's] published collections, plus a satisfying sneak preview of what one hopes will be her sixth.

1950 Sun (Baltimore) 14 Sept. 16/1 The film was sneak-previewed in Hollywood.

1859 G. W. Matsell Vocabulum 82 Sneak~thief, a fellow who sneaks into areas, basement-doors or windows, or through front doors by means of latch-keys, and entering the various apartments, steals any thing he can carry off.

1866 Harper's Mag. Nov. 690/1 A female ‘sneak thief’ and a 'longshoreman now appear.

1877 T. De W. Talmage Serm. 58 The meanest sneak-thief that comes up..at the Tomb Court.

1884 Cent. Mag. Mar. 653/2 The offences are nearly all trivial, most of them being petty larceny and sneak-thieving.

1923 Nation 26 Dec. 743/1 The autobiography of one who has come up in the world from sneak-thiefery and gangsterdom.

a1930 D. H. Lawrence Last Poems (1932) 100 That is why business seems to me despicable, and most love-affairs, just sneak-thief pocket-picking of dressed-up people.

a1930 D. H. Lawrence Last Poems (1932) 242 The jixery perhaps never picked a man's pocket But my god, they sneak-thiefed his very genitals away from him.

1959 M. Cumberland Murmurs in Rue Morgue xix. 117 He is the sneak-thief type and the petty blackmailer.

1963 V. Gielgud Goggle-box Affair xvii. 177 Nothing else was taken, so it wasn't just sneak-thievery.

1973 E. Berckman Victorian Album 82 So there I was, practising deceit on Christabel and sneak-thievery on Mrs Rumbold.

1976 Liverpool Echo 6 Dec. 7/9 Wrexham Police to-day warned shoppers to be on the lookout for sneak thieves after a woman shopping in a chemist shop in the town had £200 stolen from her bag.