Word.ws English Dictionary

char

/t͡ʃɑː/US/t͡ʃɑɹ/

char verb: to burn something to charcoal; to be burnt to charcoal. Also the alternative form of cha.

char: to burn something to charcoal; to be burnt to charcoal
Image: Totti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb (1)

char (third-person singular simple present chars, present participle charring, simple past and past participle charred)

  1. (ergative) To burn something to charcoal; to be burnt to charcoal.
    • I charred the wood.
    • The wood charred.
  2. (transitive) To burn (something) severely, so as to blacken it.
    • The fire charred her down to the bone.
  3. (transitive) To burn (something) slightly or superficially so as to affect colour.
    • The chef charred the scallops just right.

Noun (1)

char (plural chars or char)

  1. A charred substance.
    Synonyms:
    charcoal

Noun (2)

char (plural chars or char)

  1. Any of the several species of fishes of the genus Salvelinus.
    • Among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char.

Noun (3)

char (plural chars)

  1. (obsolete) A time; a turn or occasion.
  2. (obsolete) A turn of work; a labour or item of business.
  3. An odd job, a chore or piece of housework.
    • When thou hast done this chare, I’ll give thee leave to play till doomsday.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  4. A charlady, a woman employed to do housework; cleaning lady.
    • I had to scrub the kitchen today, because the char couldn't come.
    • But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit's except the charwoman wiping over the “lino” in the passage. “Nobody here yet, Miss,” said the char.1919, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Pictures”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, page 163

Verb (2)

char (third-person singular simple present chars, present participle charing or charring, simple past and past participle chared or charred)

  1. (obsolete) To turn, especially away or aside.
  2. To work, especially to do housework; to work by the day, without being a regularly hired servant.
    • She explained that she was the commissionaire's wife, who did the charing, and I gave her the order for the coffee.1893, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty, Norton, published 2005, page 677
    • Her husband had been a soldier, and from a grateful country she received a pension large enough to keep her from starvation, and by charring and doing such odd jobs as she could get she earned a little extra to supply herself with liquor.1897, W. Somerset Maugham, Lisa of Lambeth, chapter 2
  3. (obsolete) To perform; to do; to finish.
    • All's chared when he is gone.1613–1614, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, “The Two Noble Kinsmen”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, Act...
  4. To work or hew (stone, etc.)

Noun (4)

char (plural chars)

  1. A character (text element such as a letter or symbol).
    • The unit is an 80-column, 30 char. /sec dot matrix printer which uses a 5 by 7 font.1975 April 23, Computerworld, page 21
    • Chars can be considered as integers if need be without an explicit cast.1997, Cay S Horstmann, Gary Cornell, Core Java 1.1: Fundamentals
  2. (colloquial) A character (being involved in the action of a story).
    • In fact, when I somewhat lack inspiration, I tend to convert my characters according to the rules of a game which universe is close enough (I did it for some of the chars in my WIP, taking the Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook).2006, Yzabel, quotee, “The Y Logs”, in Deborah Woehr, editor, 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology: A Collection of Works by Writers Who Blog, [Morrisville, N.C.]: Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 93
    • WoW exp I feel that it is just a progress from Lv70 to 80 and then back to square one to raid\arena or die expansion. So I don’t see the point of going back just to level my char to 80 and let them idle at end-game.2008 September, Soulhacker, quotee, “Ongoing MMO Wars”, in GameAxis Unwired, number 60, Singapore: SPH Magazines Pte Ltd, →ISSN, page 11

Proper noun capitalized: Char

Char

  1. A nickname for Charlotte
  2. A nickname for Charlene
  3. A short river in west Dorset, England; in full, the River Char.

Also used as

char is also the alternative form of cha.

char meaning in Kannada and Sanskrit

char in Kannada

ಚಾರ್

char in Sanskrit

to burn slightly
प्लोषति ploṣati

Examples of char in a sentence

  • The rollers wore grooves in the nursery floors and the chars complained of getting splinters in their hands while scrubbing.1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 77:
  • Then since each char occupies one byte, these four bytes represent the three letters 'B', 'y', 'e', and the null character NUL.1998, John R Hubbard, Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Fundamentals of Computing with C++:
  • When a 32-bit int value is stored to a 16-bit char variable, information can be lost if the 16 most significant bits are not zeroes in the int value.2004, Kari Laitinen, A Natural Introduction to Computer Programming with C#:
  • Thus string variables are pointer variables to chars.2000, Ken Brownsey, The essence of data structures using C++:

All 40 example sentences with char

Synonyms of char

All synonyms of char

Forms of char

Verb
third-person singular presentchars
present participlecharring
past participlecharred
pastcharred
present participlecharing
past participlechared
pastchared
alternative form (obsolete)chewre
Noun
pluralchars
pluralchar
alternative formcharr
alternative formchare

Past tense of char: charred

Plural of char: chars or char

Origin of char

Back-formation from charcoal.

Unknown, perhaps from Celtic, such as Irish ceara (“fiery red”) (found in personal names). Or, perhaps borrowed from Middle Low German schar (“flounder, dab”), from Old Saxon skard, from Proto-Germanic *skardaz, related to *skeraną (“to cut”), referring to its shape. If so, related to shard.

From Middle English cherre (“odd job”), from Old English ċierr (“a turn, change, time, occasion, affair, business”), from ċierran (“to turn, change, turn oneself, go, come, proceed, turn back, return, regard, translate, persuade, convert, be converted, agree to, submit, make to submit, reduce”), from Proto-Germanic *karzijaną (“to turn”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *gers- (“to bend, turn”). Cognate with Dutch keer (“a time, turn, occasion”), German Kehre (“a turn, bight, bend”) and kehren (“to sweep”) or umkehren (“to return or reverse”). More at chore, ajar.

Words formed from char

Phrases with char

Words that rhyme with char

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about char

What does char mean?
Char means to burn something to charcoal; to be burnt to charcoal.
What is char in Kannada?
Char in Kannada is ಚಾರ್. See Char meaning in Kannada.
How do you use char in a sentence?
The rollers wore grooves in the nursery floors and the chars complained of getting splinters in their hands while scrubbing.
What part of speech is char?
Char can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce char?
Char is pronounced /t͡ʃɑː/ (UK).
What is the past tense of char?
The past tense of char is charred.

Words near char in the dictionary

  1. chaqui taklla
  2. chaqui taqlla
  3. chaquitaclla
  4. chaquitaklla
  5. chaquitaqlla
  6. char
  7. char kueh teow
  8. char kuey teow
  9. char kway teow
  10. char siew
  11. char siu

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: char (page history and authors); Char (page history and authors); char (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-char.wav.

Cite this entry: “char.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/char. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.