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Charing Cross Not from chère reine, in honour of Eleanor, the dear wife of Edward I., but la chère 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 Ægean Sea. Seven cities claim to be his place of birth-
“Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athe'næ.”- 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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