smell of the shop

smell of the shop (third-person singular simple present smells of the shop, present participle smelling of the shop, simple past and past participle smelled of the shop or smelt of the shop)

1. (idiomatic, dated) To indicate too distinctively one's occupation or profession.
   • 1834, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine:

     They may purchase estates, and become squires, and marry women "of condition;" but the way in which their money was acquired must exclude at least that generation. Their money smells of the shop.

   • 1851, The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review:

     […] the acceptance of a consulship is held by the young diplomatic aspirants as an implied engagement to attend to the national trade, to the imminent risk of smelling of the shop

• “shop”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.