chiaus

In the second day and the 19th round of the spelldown, 13-year-old Betty Morgan, whose horn-blowing, flag-waving claque from Washington's St. Thomas Apostle School had cheered her through spinosity, serriform and caliginous, choked up on chiaus.

A Chiaus was at once dispatched to the Sultan, and there was held a Council.

There is no doubt that it comes from a Turkish word meaning interpreter, spelt chaus in Hakluyt and chiaus by Ben Jonson.

But a century and a half after the introduction of the word we come across a circumstantial story of a Turkish chiaus who swindled some London merchants of a large sum in 1609, the year before Jonson used the word in the Alchemist.

The Turkish Chiaus is shortly coming for the Hagh.