Chapter CHUNÁM to CHURRUCK of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

is obscure; [the popular account is that it is a corr. of P. chap-o-rast, ‘left and right’]; but see Beames (Comp. Gram. i. 212), who gives buckle as the original meaning.

1865.—“I remember the days when every servant in my house was a chuprassee, with the exception of the Khansaumaun and a Portuguese Ayah.”—The Dawk Bungalow, p. 389.

c. 1866.—

“The big Sahib’s tent has gone from under the Peepul tree,
With his horde of hungry chuprassees, and oily sons of the quill—
I paid them the bribe they wanted, and Sheitan will settle the bill.''

Sir A. C. Lyall, The Old Pindaree.

1877.—“One of my chuprassies or messengers…was badly wounded.”—Meadows Taylor, Life, i. 227.

1880.—“Through this refractory medium the people of India see their rulers. The Chuprassie paints his master in colours drawn from his own black heart. Every lie he tells, every insinuation he throws out, every demand he makes, is endorsed with his master’s name. He is the arch-slanderer of our name in India.”—Ali Baba, 102–3.

CHURR, s. H. char, Skt. char, ‘to move.’ “A sand-bank or island in the current of a river, deposited by the water, claims to which were regulated by the Bengal Reg. xi. 1825” (Wilson). A char is new alluvial land deposited by the great rivers as the floods are sinking, and covered with grass, but not necessarily insulated. It is remarkable that Mr. Marsh mentions a very similar word as used for the same thing in Holland. “New sandbank land, covered with grasses, is called in Zeeland schor” (Man and Nature, p. 339). The etymologies are, however, probably quite apart.

1878.—“In the dry season all the various streams…are merely silver threads winding among innumerable sandy islands, the soil of which is specially adapted for the growth of Indigo. They are called Churs.”—Life in the Mofussil, ii. 3 seq.

CHURRUCK, s. A wheel or any rotating machine; particularly applied to simple machines for cleaning cotton. Pers. charkh, ‘the celestial sphere,’ ‘a wheel of any kind,’ &c. Beng. charak is apparently a corruption of the Persian word, facilitated by the nearness of the Skt. chakra, &c.