chinch

American  

[chinch] / tʃɪntʃ /

noun

chinches plural

1. chinch bug.

2. (loosely) a bedbug.

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chinch British  

/ tʃɪntʃ /

noun

1. another name for a bedbug

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• chinches
  plural

Etymology

Origin of chinch

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

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

chinch chinches

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

A glass of water or a chinch bug or a copper coin is composed of molecules.

From Time Magazine Archive

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 "Across Five Aprils" by Irene Hunt

You can't never git de chinches out of dese cotton matt'esses us has to sleep on now days.

From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Georgia Narratives, Part 4 by Work Projects Administration

Immediately the chinches disappeared and not one could be found, although one could gather than by handfuls before, as they say.”

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 21 of 55 1624 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century. by Robertson, James Alexander

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

From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume XVI, Texas Narratives, Part 4 by United States. Work Projects Administration

We have a house to live in now, and de chinches eat us up almos, and we have nuthin' to live on now, jist a little from charity.

From Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 1 by Various

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 The History of Virginia, in Four Parts by Beverley, Robert