moonlight

   1. obsolete British

   associated with smuggling

   The time when the stuff was shipped ashore and transported. Smuggled spirits were called moonlight and a habitual smuggler was said to have been bred in the moonlight:

    Thirty 'crack' hands, who had been bred in the moonlight from boyhood. (Vedder, 1832)

   2. obsolete Irish

   to wound

   Violence in 19th-century agrarian disturbances tended to take place at night, with warnings about arson and assault being signed Captain Moonlight:

    He had deposed to his experience of being moonlighted in the thigh. {Daily Telegraph, November 1888)

   3. to work at a second job

   The work is often done in the evening, without paying tax on the earnings:

    A joiner who 'moonlights' at weekends for his mates... (Shankland, 1980)

   The word is also used of those who continue draw unemployment monies from the state without revealing earnings from casual employment.