Snuff.

Up to snuff. Wide awake, knowing, sharp; not easily taken in or imposed upon; alive to scent (Dutch, snuffen, to scent, snuf; Danish, snöfte).

Took it in snuff—in anger, in huff.

“Youʹll mar the light by taking it in snuff.”

Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2.

“Who, … when it next came there, took it in snuff.”—Shakespeare: I Henry IV., i. 3.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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