chinch

American

[chinch] / tʃɪntʃ /

noun

chinch bug.
(loosely) a bedbug.

chinch British

/ tʃɪntʃ /

noun

another name for a bedbug

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of chinch

1615–25; < Spanish chinche < Latin cīmic- (stem of cīmex ) bug

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He don’t go to chinch or nothing, but he not so quick to judge.

From Literature

There were chinch bugs and grasshoppers, months of drought, elections, slavery, secession, talk of war—the adult world of trouble, though, was not real enough to dim the goodness of an April morning.

From Literature

I had felt faint in the hot sun many times myself and had seen chinch bugs eat up whole fields of wheat, and yet I did not want to die.

From Project Gutenberg

All the houses was made of logs and we slept on shuck and grass mattresses what was allus full of chinches.

From Project Gutenberg

All the troublesome vermin that ever I heard anybody complain of, are either frogs, snakes, musquitoes, chinches, seed ticks, or red worms, by some called potato lice.

From Project Gutenberg

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023