Borrowed from Dutch smurf (via the Belgian comic De Smurfen, a translation of French Les Schtroumpfs), from French schtroumpf, a word that was created by Peyo based on German Strumpf (literally “stocking, sock”) while he was having dinner, either simply because it sounds funny to the French ear or based on a regional German use for “idiot”. Armand van Raalte was an employee for the Belgian publisher of Peyo's stories who felt that schtroumpf would not have the same effect in Dutch, so he tried to find a simple word that could be used both as a noun and a verb. The result was smurf. In other languages, the term was similarly altered; compare the translations below.
He occasionally used the proper noun of the restaurant as an adverb, the way a Smurf would.2021 December 8, Geraldine DeRuiter, “Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever”, in The Everywhereist:
Drugs, Government, Law enforcement, Medicine, Pharmacology, SciencesSlang One member of a team, each of whom acquires a small amount of money or ingredients for manufacturing drugs, keeping the transactions too small in order to not raise suspicion.
Each smurf goes to different banks and purchases cashier's checks in denominations of less than $ 10,000, thus bypassing the reporting requirement.1998, Michael D. Lyman, Gary W. Potter, Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts, and Control, page 202:
Once the checks and money orders were purchased, the smurfs delivered them to Barrera, who arranged deposits of multiple checks and money orders into bank accounts that he controlled for further transfer to accounts in Panama, Colombia, and elsewhere.2001, Robert E. Grosse, Drugs and Money: Laundering Latin America's Cocaine Dollars, page 73:
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The local cooks would get some smurfs to buy boxes of Sudafed at all the drugstores in a hundred-mile radius, then pay them off in product.2020, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts, page 22:
Borrowed from Dutch smurf (via the Belgian comic De Smurfen, a translation of French Les Schtroumpfs), from French schtroumpf, a word that was created by Peyo based on German Strumpf (literally “stocking, sock”) while he was having dinner, either simply because it sounds funny to the French ear or based on a regional German use for “idiot”. Armand van Raalte was an employee for the Belgian publisher of Peyo's stories who felt that schtroumpf would not have the same effect in Dutch, so he tried to find a simple word that could be used both as a noun and a verb. The result was smurf. In other languages, the term was similarly altered; compare the translations below.
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Slang Used to replace any other verb, as is typical of smurfs.