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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.

Three successive winters favorable to chinch bugs had raised Corn Belt infestation to menacing proportions.

From Time Magazine Archive

The chinch bugs assaulted the scraggly grain stalks, and the grasshoppers swarmed.

From Time Magazine Archive

If the newspapers succeed in selling Landon to this country, thus proving to the world that anything can be sold by proper advertising, then Kansas will advertise her chinch bugs and grasshoppers.

From Time Magazine Archive

Relatively impervious to either drought, damp or chinch bug, amenable to almost any type of soil, the bean's chief enemies are rabbits, grasshoppers, blister beetles.

From Time Magazine Archive

“They don’t know what a chinch bug or a Hessian fly is up there.”

From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck

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