Entry: chintz (n.)
In context: "His mom's special couch for TV was nubbly red chintz.."
Definition: A name for the painted or stained calicoes imported from India; now, a name for cotton cloths fast-printed with designs of flowers, etc., in a number of colours, generally not less than five, and usually glazed.
Other: Check out this interesting etymology:
Originally chints, plural of chint, < Hindi chīnt; also formerly found as chite, French chite, Portuguese chita, < Mahratti chīt in same sense; both < Sanskrit chitra variegated. The plural of this word, being more frequent in commercial use, came in course of time to be mistaken for a singular, and this to be written chince, chinse, and at length chintz (apparently after words like Coblentz, quartz). This error was not established before the third quarter of the 18th cent., although editors and press-readers have intruded it into re-editions of earlier works. Compare the similar baize for bays
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 447
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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