Cham

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kæm/

From French cham, from Turkish han ("lord, prince") (borrowed into Arabic, Persian, Mongolian etc.).

Full definition of cham

Noun

1. Archaic spelling of khan
• 1840, Thomas Fuller, The History of the Holy War‎But Baiothnoi, chief captain of the Tartarian army (for they were not admitted to speak with the great cham himself), cried quits with this friar, outvying him with the greatness and divinity of their cham; and sent back by them a blunt letter...
2. An autocrat or dominant critic, especially Samuel Johnson.
• 1997: "Sitting at a table, drinking Ale, observing the Mist thro’ the Window-Panes, Mason forty-five, the Cham sixty-four." — Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
• 2007: The Tonsons ... would publish Johnson's Shakespeare only by subscription, obliging the Great Cham to sell copies well ahead of publication — Michael Dobson, ‘For his Nose was as sharpe as a Pen’, London Review of Books 29:9, p. 3

See chap.

Verb

1. (obsolete) To chew.
• 1531, William Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas More's DialogueBut he that repenteth toward the law of God, and at the sight of the sacrament, or of the breaking, feeling, eating, chamming, or drinking, calleth to remembrance the death of Christ, his body breaking and blood shedding for our sins ...

Anagrams

• Mach