cham

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

• IPA^(key): /kæm/

cham (plural chams)

1. Archaic spelling of khan.
   • 1840, Thomas Fuller, The History of the Holy War

     But 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.

cham (third-person singular simple present chams, present participle chamming, simple past and past participle chammed)

1. (obsolete) To chew.
   • 1531, William Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue

     But 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 [...]

From ch- +‎ am, from ich + am.

cham

1. (West Country, obsolete) I am

• Holloway, William (1840) A General Dictionary of Provincialisms, London: John Russell Smith, page 27

• ACMH, HAMC, HMAC, Mach, Mach., mach.

From French charme.

cham

1. potion

From Vietnamese Chăm, from Eastern Cham Cam.

cham (feminine singular chame, masculine plural chams, feminine plural chames)

1. Cham

From Turkish han (“khan”).

cham m (plural chams)

1. khan

• “cham” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

• (Munster) IPA^(key): [xaumˠ]
• (Galway) IPA^(key): [xɑːmˠ]
• (Mayo, Ulster) IPA^(key): [xamˠ]

cham

1. Lenited form of cam.

From Old Portuguese chão (“ground”), inherited from Latin plānum (“level ground”)

cham (plural cham-cham)

1. soil
2. ground

   Fu-fula semeam na cham di Hoing-Gong ― Flowers picked from the soil of Hong Kong

See ch-.

cham

1. I am

cham

1. Alternative spelling of chamm: lenited form of cam.

• IPA^(key): /xam/

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cham m pers

1. (derogatory) an arrogant, ill-mannered person

   Synonyms: prostak, prymityw

2. (archaic) peasant; countryman; person of low birth

   Synonym: wieśniak

• cham in Polish dictionaries at PWN

cham m (plural chãos)

1. Obsolete spelling of chão

cham

1. Lenited form of cam.

cham

1. (intransitive) to die

   Icham. ― He/she died.

   Mu me jk'an xicham.[1]

   I do not want to die.

   Synonyms: chʼay, chʼay ikʼ, laj, olan

• Laughlin, Robert M. [et al.] (1988) The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of Santo Domingo Zinacantán, vol. I. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.