chi-ike
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit](This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Interjection
[edit]- (costermongers' slang) Used as a salute or word of praise.
Noun
[edit]- (UK, obsolete) A hearty, often light-heartedly sarcastic, greeting.
- 2006, Edwin James Milliken, edited by Patricia Marks, The ′Arry Ballads: An Annotated Collection of the Verse Letters by Punch Editor E.J. Milliken, page 95:
- I lifted my lamps and saw BILLY. We did a good chi-ike, you bet!
“Watcher, BILLY, old buster!” says I, […]
- (slang, obsolete, Australia, New Zealand) A noisy hubbub
Verb
[edit]chi-ike (third-person singular simple present chi-ikes, present participle chi-iking, simple past and past participle chi-iked)
- (UK) To mock or jeer; to chiack.
- 1924, “Causeway”, in Neville Braybrooke, editor, The Wind and the Rain, page 21:
- Uncle Frank wouldn′t have liked it, and I knew how the chaps would laugh and chi-ike me for chumming up with a silly old Chinky.
- 1939, Nicholas Monsarrat, This Is the Schoolroom, published 2000, page 8:
- Round about us windows began to bang upwards; a policeman on the corner looked away, pretending not to hear; a couple of tarts started to chi-ike us and then shut up suddenly.
References
[edit]- John A. Simpson and Edmund S.C. Weiner, eds. "chi-hike", The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989)
- John C. Hotten "Chi-ike" A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words (1874)