cheroot

Definition

A cigar with square-cut ends.

Etymology

Probably from Portuguese charuto (“cigar”), from Tamil சுருட்டு (curuṭṭu, “roll (of tobacco)”).

Example Sentences

• "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, https://books.google.ca/books?id=_ZJMAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false 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, http://www.bartleby.com/364/220.html ’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:"