Smooch, Schmooze.

A correspondent asks about the relationship and comparative etymology of smooch, schmooze, and German schmusen, and I thought it was an interesting enough tangle to post. First, smooch ‘kiss,’ which OED (entry from 1986) says is a variant of smouch ‘kiss’ (e.g. 1811 “The little hideous Duc de Berri smouches us all,” Countess Granville, Letters) “Of uncertain origin […] Compare German dialect schmutzen to kiss, to smile.” Wiktionary, on the other hand, says: Perhaps from a dialectal variation of smack. Compare also Low German smok (“a kiss, a smouch/smooch”), Alemannic German Schmutz, Schmützle (“a kiss, a smooch”). Wiktionary has nothing on the cited German dialect forms. Now for the verb schmooze; OED (entry revised 2019): “< Yiddish shmuesn to talk, converse, chat < shmues chat, gossip (see schmooze n.).” And the noun: Either (i) < Yiddish shmues chat, gossip < Hebrew šĕmūʿōṯ, plural of šĕmūʿah rumour < šāmaʿ to hear (see Shema n.), or perhaps (ii) < schmooze v. Compare earlier…