(Thisetymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at theEtymology scriptorium.)
chi-ike
- (costermongers' slang)Used as a salute or word of praise.
chi-ike (pluralchi-ikes)
- (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,page95:I lifted my lamps and saw BILLY. We did a goodchi-ike, you bet!
“Watcher, BILLY, old buster!” says I,[…]
- (slang, obsolete, Australia, New Zealand) A noisyhubbub
chi-ike (third-person singular simple presentchi-ikes,present participlechi-iking,simple past and past participlechi-iked)
- (UK) Tomock orjeer; tochiack.
1924, “Causeway”, in Neville Braybrooke, editor,The Wind and the Rain,page21:Uncle Frank wouldn′t have liked it, and I knew how the chaps would laugh andchi-ike me for chumming up with a silly old Chinky.
1939,Nicholas Monsarrat,This Is the Schoolroom, published2000,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 tochi-ike us and then shut up suddenly.
- 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)
