Heading
e.g., a quid of tobacco; a dram of spirits, etc. [From chaw, verb, q.v.]
1749. 'Humours of the Fleet,' quoted in Ashton's The Fleet, p. 286. And in his nether jaw Was stuff'd an elemosynary chaw.
1772. Gentleman's Magazine, XLII., 191. The tars . . . Took their chaws, hitched their trousers, and grinn'd in our faces. [m.]
1833. Marryat, Peter Simple, xiv. The boy was made to open his mouth, while the chaw of tobacco was extracted.
1838. Glascock, Land Sharks and Sea Gulls, II., 123. 'I'm blest if I'm fit for work, 'thout a raw chaw.'
1864. Daily Telegraph, 26 July. The gentleman have often 'that within that passeth show,' to wit, a chaw of tobacco: this is not very conducive to volubility in conversation.
3. (University).—A trick; device; or 'sell.'
Verb (vulgar).—1. To eat or chew noisily and roughly. To bite (see quot., 1890). Once literary; now degenerate, and vulgarly applied; specifically 'to chew tobacco.'
1890. The Oont, Rudyard Kipling in Scots Observer, . . . We socks him with a stretcher-pole, and 'eads him off in front, And when we saves his bloomin' life, he chaws our bloomin' arm.
2. (University).—To deceive, trick, 'sell,' or impose upon one.
To chaw over, verbal phr. (common).—To create ridicule by repeating one's words.
To chaw up, phr. (American).—To get the better of; to demolish; 'do for'; smash or finish. Chawed up: utterly done for.
1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. xvi., p. 162, 'Here's full particulars of the patriotic loco-foco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs was so chawed up.
1862. C. F. Browne, Artemus Ward: His Book, p. 66. We chawed 'em up, that's what we did.
To chaw up one's words, phr. (American).—To retract an assertion; 'to eat one's words.'
Chaw-Bacon, subs. (colloquial).—A
country bumpkin. [From
chaw, a vulgar form of chew, to
masticate or chew, + bacon, the
staple food of agricultural labourers.]
Other nicknames for a countryman
are bacon-slicer; clod-*hopper;
barn-door savage; clod-*pole;
cart-horse; Johnny;
cabbage-gelder; turnip-sucker;
joskin; jolterhead; yokel; clod-*crusher,
etc.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum. Chaw Bacon. A countryman. A stupid fellow.
1822. Blackwood's Magazine, XII., 379. You live cheap with chaw-bacons and see a fine, flat country. [m.]
1854. Whyte Melville, General Bounce, ch. v. 'Give me the pail, you lop-eared buffoons—do you call that the way to feed a pig?' and the General, seizing the bucket from an astonished chaw-bacon, who stood aghast, as if he thought his master was mad, managed to spill the greater part of the contents over his own person and gaiters.
Chaws, subs. (venery).—Copulation.
For synonyms, see Greens.
Cheap. On the cheap, adv. phr.
(colloquial).—At a low rate [of
money]; economically; keeping
up a showy appearance on small
means.
1884. Cornhill Mag., June, p. 614. His being's end and aim, both by day and night, is to obtain as much drink as possible on the cheap.
Cheap and nasty, adv. phr. (colloquial).—Said of articles which, though pleasing to the eye, are 'shoddy' in fact. For special application, see quot.
