I discovered this word through one of my mum’s random Wordle guesses (as we all do, sometimes she just tries random letters until Wordle says ‘yes’). And being as it’s nearly Christmas, it’s actually quite fitting. Well, half of it is, anyway. That’s because ‘chout’ has two completely different meanings.
Let’s start with the (sort-of) Christmassy one. ‘Chout’ in this sense means to joke, play the fool or mess about in a silly, good‑natured way. This meaning appears in some older English dialect dictionaries, like the Century Dictionary, a massive, multi-volume English dictionary originally published in the late 19th century.
The second, and better documented, meaning of ‘chout’ comes from a tax that Maratha rulers in western India demanded from neighbouring territories during the 17th and 18th centuries. (The Maratha were a powerful group of rulers and warriors who controlled much of western and central India during this time.) They called this ‘chauth’, which meant ‘a quarter’ in Marathi, because they demanded a quarter of the revenue from the territories they targeted. I say ‘tax’, but it was essentially protection money which rulers paid to avoid being raided by the Marathas. British administrators in India picked up the word and began describing it in English as ‘chout’.
There you go. I hope we all have a good chout this festive season – just the first kind, though. If you find yourself demanding payment from your neighbours in exchange for not setting fire to their recycling bins, you’ve got the wrong one.
(PS While I was researching this post I found Chout, a Chicago-based 90s-style grunge rock band known for their Alice in Chains-like sound and music. And I think I love them.)
