scufter

scufter (plural scufters)

1. (UK, North Country, dated, slang) A policeman.
   • 1947, Robert Briffault, New Life of Mr. Martin, page 56:

     Nothing like being dead for putting the scufters off the scent.

• John Camden Hotten (1873), The Slang Dictionary

scufter (third-person singular simple present scufters, present participle scuftering, simple past and past participle scuftered)

1. (dialectal) To bustle, to hurry.
   • 1874, George Coward (of Carlisle), The songs and ballads of Cumberland, to which are added dialect and other poems, with notes, ed. by Sidney Gilpin, page 116:

     Scarcely had the boy undressed himself and lain down on his pillow, ere his two brothers, having heard tidings of the fight, came scuftering in hot haste into the room in their night dresses, all aglow with curiosity […]

   • 1900, Emma Brooke, The Engrafted Rose: A Novel, page 100:

     On working-days she went in a short linsey skirt with a loose print bedgown; an old straw hat would be tied over her ears by a rusty black ribbon, and about her waist would hang the packages committed to her charge. But in honour of the evenings celebration, to enjoy which she had spared her willing with the rest, she had clothed herself in garments which had been her "best things" when a girl. "Eh! Aw hev scuftered," said she, glancing at the two women with a pair of keen black eyes set in a frame of tiny puckers. "Titter oop t' sprunt sud ower a bit. Aw'm a' of a swelter wi' runnin'." "Yon's no cloak o' thine, Susannah […]"

   • 1963, John William Robertson Scott, The Countryman: A Quarterly Review and Miscellany, page 182:

     […] scuftered off an' lowpt t'dyke afooar Ah cud brittle him wid me gibby-stick.