Talk:chinchy

The OED says this started as Spanish chico or similar Italian, meaning small, ultimately from L. ciccum and maybe Gr. κίκκος. Anyway that gets us to chichi or chiche. Then the OED suggests it was miscopied as chinche by scribes, and chinchy is a simple variation. This was used as both noun and adjective: chinch, chinchy : miser, miserly. Also as a word for bedbugs or other biting insects, sometimes as "chink" (!).

Johnson read "chinchy" in Chaucer and suggested chinchy > stingy. The OED doesn't support this, but doesn't have a good derivation for that form of stingy either — unless it came from the parallel form sting-y somehow. I couldn't find evidence either way.

The relationship with chintzy is also unclear. I suspect it was an accidental conflation of the older word chinchy with then-modern furniture covered cheaply in chintz fabric.

Apparently chinche dropped out of UK English but persisted as dialect in the American South and Caribbean.

Mblakele (talk) 17:19, 2 June 2019 (UTC)