Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

+chop-chop: See above.

+chopstick: See above.

+chota/chhota/choota/: Scrawled upon the back of the two of clubs in Neel's Jack-Chitsare these words: ' Chhotais to burraas peg is to mast: hence the common Laskari locution chota-peg, often used synonymously with faltu-dol.'

+chota-hazri: See above. 'How Barrère & Leland have managed to come to the conclusion that a chota-hazricorresponds to the "auroral mint julep or pre-prandial cocktail of Virginia " I will never understand, for it usually consists of nothing more than toast and tea.'

chownee (*The Glossary):'A great pity that this fine Hind. word for "military encampment" came to be replaced by the dull Anglo-Saxon "cantonment".'

+chuddar/chadar: 'In no field of meaning has English relied more heavily on migrants than in referring to the clothing of womens' heads, shoulders and breasts. Yet, even having absorbed shawl, chuddar/chadar, and doo -putty/dupatta, it still has no word for that part of the sari that serves the same function, for both ghungtaand ãchal remain strangers to the Oracle. The cumbly/kambal("blanket") can scarcely be offered as an alternative.'

chuldan (*Roebuck): See choola/chula.

chull (*The Barney-Book): 'Barrère & Leland reveal their ignorance by giving this the gloss of "make haste", a meaning that belongs more to the imperative jaw! Chullhas much more the sense of the French allez or the Arabic yalla . One searches in vain for a good English equivalent, "come on" being hardly as expressive.'

chup/choops (*The Barney-Book): 'Another word that has migrated through the nursery, being one of the few exhortations to silence that can be considered polite.'

chupow/chupao (*The Glossary): 'Despite its present currency, this emigrant is unlikely to find a permanent seat in the House of Verbs, since it serves no function that is not already discharged by the English "to hide".'

chute/choot: 'This word's popularity is largely due to the one notable advantage that it possesses over other more specific anatomical terms: to wit, that it can be applied to all human beings, irrespective of gender, in the full confidence that the subject will be in possession of a few such. This is possibly why it enjoys such widespread use, both in Hind. and English, the difference being that in English it is rarely used in the absence of some other paired element ( ban-/betee-etc.). One exception is the cant term chutier, which is used abusively to imply an exces sive endowment in regard to this aspect of the anatomy.' See also banchoot/barnshootetc.

cobbily-mash (*The Glossary): 'This was, of course, not a mash at all, but a preparation of dried fish (being a corruption of the Bengali term shutki-maach .)'

+cockup: This was of course one of many words that perished in the abattoir of Victorian prudery. Being uncommonly fond of the fish to which it referred, lates calcarifer (bhetki/ beckty), Neel refused to recognize that this term was greatly endangered: he certainly bears some of the responsibility for its extinction.

+compound/kampung: There was for long a feeling within the family that this word ought not to be included in the Chrestomathy , since the fact of its having gained entry into the Oraclein both its forms would provide a convincing refutation of Neel's pet theory (according to which, words could never migrate in pairs – see bandar). These anxieties were set at rest when a wordy-wallah pointed out that these words are neither homonyms nor synonyms: they are merely variant spellings of the same word.

conker/kunkur (*The Glossary): 'This word has nothing whatever to do with water- or horse-chestnuts. It is a corruption of the Hind. kankar , "gravel", and is used in the same sense.'

+consumah/consummer/khansama: See bobachee.

+coolin/kulin: 'In no way to be confused with "coolie", this was the word used to refer to the highest rung of certain castes.' A contracted form has recently gained some currency in classycircles: "cool".'

cot: See charpoy.

cotia (*The Glossary): A vessel from the Kerala coast that was only rarely to be sighted on the Hooghly.

cow-chilo (*The Linkister): 'Often have I heard this item of the South China patois being used to disparage the Chinese and their regard for women. Yet the expression is merely a badly matched pairing of words, the first being a corruption of the Cantonese kai .'

cranny/karani (*The Glossary): See carcanna.

+cumbly/kambal: See chuddar.

+cumra/kamra/camera (*The Glossary, *Roebuck): Neel gave the credit for the introduction of this item of Portuguese nautical usage ( camara ), into the languages of Hind., English included. In its original nautical sense, it was used of course to mean 'cabin', but by virtue of conveniently expressing the idea of partitioned space, it has reverted to the sense of its Latin avatar, in which it meant 'room' or 'chamber'. 'The curious use of gol-kamra(liter-ally "round-room") to mean "drawing-room" is unlikely to survive.'

+cumshaw: See baksheesh.

cunchunee/kanchani (*The Glossary): See bayadère.

cursy/coorsy/kursi (*The Barney-Book, *Roebuck, *The Glossary): From the Jack-Chits. 'This Laskari word is not derived from the common Hind. word for "chair" ( kursi ) as many suppose: it is, in my opinion, a corruption of the English nautical term "cross-trees", for it too refers to the perch that is formed by the junction of a yard and a mast. But the resemblance is not accidental, for it is in this seat that the lascar enjoys the few moments of leisure that fall to his lot.'

+cushy/khush/khushi: 'In Laskari this was the equivalent of the English nautical usage "cheerily". To the lascar, then, goes the credit for inventing the English meaning of this word, which was carried onshore by sailors.'

dabusa (*Roebuck): 'Roebuck avers that any cabin may be so designated, but it is a truism that every vessel is a world unto itself, with its own tongues and dialects – and on the Ibis this term was applied, always and exclusively, to the "tween-deck", which should properly have been the "beech-ka-tootuk".'

+dacoit: 'This word', writes Neel, 'although universally known, is frequently misused, for the term applies, by law, only to miscreants who belong to a gang of at least five persons.'

dadu (*The Barney-Book): 'Strange that this English gypsy word for father should be the same as the Bengali for "grandfather"; no less strange that the Eng. gypsy for mother, dai/dye, should be the same as the common Hind./Urdu for midwife.'

+daftar/dufter: This was another word which had already, in Neel's lifetime, yielded to an ungainly rival, 'office'. This too carried down with it a lashkarof fine English words that were used for its staff: the clerks known as crannies, the mootsuddieswho laboured over the accounts, the shroffswho were responsible for money-changing, the khazana-darswho watched over their treasuries, the hurkarusand peons who delivered messages, and of course, the innumerable moonshies, dubashesand druggermenwho laboured over the translation of every document. It was the passing of the last three, all concerned with the work of translation, that most troubled Neel; those were the words he would cite when Englishmen boasted to him of the absorptive power of their language: 'Beware, my friends: your tongues were flexible when you were still supplicants at the world's khazanas. Now that you have the whole world in a stranglehold, your tongues are hardening, growing stiffer. Do you ever count the words you lose every year? Beware! Victory is but the vanguard of decay and decline.'