English

Noun

cheroot ‎(plural cheroots)

1. A cigar with square-cut ends
   • 1810, Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum, London: Black, Parry & Kingsbury, Vol. I, p. 499,

     The lowest classes of Europeans, as also of the natives, and, indeed, most of the officers of country-ships, frequently smoke cheroots, exactly corresponding with the Spanish segar, though usually made rather more bulky. However fragrant the smokers themselves may consider cheroots, those who use hookahs, hold them to be not only vulgar, but intolerable!

   • 1853, The Lancet, Vol. II, The Analytical Sanitary Commission. Cigars and their Adulterations, pp. 444-445,

     Purchased—of a Hawker, in Whitechapel-road. ¶ These cheroots were made up of two twisted wrappers or layers of thin brown paper, while the interior consisted entirely of hay, not a particle of tobacco entering into their composition. ¶ It appears that about the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, the sale of spurious cheroots of this kind constitutes a regular business.

   • 1892, Rudyard Kipling, "Mandalay", in Rudyard Kipling's Verse, Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1922,

     ’Er petticoat was yaller an’ ’er little cap was green, / An’ ’er name was Supi-yaw-lat—jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen, / An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot, / An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ’eathen idol’s foot:

   • 1934, George Orwell, Burmese Days, Chapter 2,

     It was after nine now, and the room, scented with the acrid smoke of Westfield's cheroot, was stifling hot.

   • 1948, Sinclair Lewis, The God-Seeker, New York: Popular Library, Chapter 5, p. 29,

     In distinguished despair he lighted a cheroot, and for Aaron Gadd that was no trivial gesture. Both his father and Deacon Popplewood […] contended that smoke issuing from the mouth was a little too much like the flames of Tophet for sound Congregational practice.

   • 1986, Heinrich Böll, "The Unknown Soldier" in The Casualty, translated by Leila Vennewitz, New York and London: W. Norton & Co., 1989, p. 97,

     I had a long Virginia cheroot between my lips, it tasted deliciously bitter and mild, while in my back the goo of pus and blood and shreds of cloth and hand-grenade splinters went on simmering away.

   • 2012, Christopher Simon Sykes, David Hockney: the Biography, 1937-1975. A Rake's Progress, Doubleday, Chapter Ten,

     Hamilton offered to put them up and Hockney spent the time making a marvellous etching of him sitting in a chair holding a cheroot in his right hand.

Translations

Derived terms

• exotic cheroot

References

1. ↑ “cheroot” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary (2001).