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Charing Cross Not from ch�re reine, in honour of Eleanor, the dear wife of Edward I., but la ch�re reine (the Blessed Virgin). Hence, in the Close Roll, Richard II, part I (1382), we read that the custody of the falcons at Charryng, near Westminster, was granted to Simon Burley, who was to receive 12d. a day from the Wardrobe.
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Cheese Something choice (Anglo-Saxon, ceos-an, to choose; German, kiesen; French, choisir). Chaucer says, �To cheese whether she wold him marry or no.�
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Pooh-Bah
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A man may be an ass in whole by nought but term of art But be he but a fraction ass whole, it's his most prominent part
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Chic Fashionable; comme il faut; the mode. This is an archaic French word in vogue in the seventeenth century. It really is the Spanish chico, little, also a little boy, and chica, a little girl or darling. Similarly, wee in Scotch is a loving term of admiration and pride. (Chic is an abbreviation of the German geschickt, apt, clever.)
I haven't heard the word "chic" lately. It used to irritate me to hear it pronounced "chick".
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Child at one time, meant a female infant, and was the correlative of boy.
�Mercy on `s! A barne, a very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder?�- Shakespeare: Winter's Tale, iii. 3.
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Chiliasts [kiliasts]. Another word for Millenarians; those who believe that Christ will return to this earth and reign a thousand years in the midst of His saints. (Greek, chilias, a thousand.)
Where have all the silly-assed chiliasts gone?
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Chios (Kios). The man of Chios. Homer, who lived at Chios, near the �gean Sea. Seven cities claim to be his place of birth-
�Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athe'n�.�- Varro.
I know the word "colophon" meaning the publishers identifying emblem on title page of boods, I did not know it was name of an island. I wonder how the emblem meaning arose.
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Cue (1 syl.). The tail of a sentence (French, queue), the catch-word which indicates when another actor is to speak; a hint; the state of a person's temper, as �So-and-so is in a good cue (or) bad cue.�
I think this etymology makes more sense than the one given in my dictionary.
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Culverin properly means a serpent (Latin, colubrinus, the coluber), but is applied to a long, slender piece of artillery employed in the sixteenth century to carry balls to a great distance. Queen Elizabeth's �Pocket Pistol� in Dover Castle is a culverin.
I had a Tory ancestor who made them, but sold them to the British, and had to flee to Halifax and thence to England. When I was a boy, "Go to Halifax!" was a permissible euphemism for "go to Hell".
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Cur A fawning, mean-spirited fellow, a crop-tailed dog (Latin, curtus, crop-tailed. French, court; our curt). According to forest laws, a man who had no right to the privilege of the chase was obliged to cut off the tail of his dog. Hence, a degenerate dog or man is called a cur.
I have also read that nobles had peasants' dogs' toenails cut off so that they could not chase deer.
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