Word.ws English Dictionary

chee chee

chee chee noun: a breast, tit.

Noun (1)

chee chee (plural chee chees)

  1. (US, in plural, slang) A breast, tit.

Noun (2)

chee chee (countable and uncountable, plural chee chees)

  1. (UK, archaic, countable, ethnic, obsolete, offensive) A mixed-race person of British and Eurasian origin and in particular of Anglo-Indian descent.
    • Pretty little Looking-Glasses, / Good and cheap for Chee-chee Misses.1781 March 17, Hicky's Bengal Gazette
    • Chee-chees, blacky-whites, half castes, Anglo-Indians. Midnight's orphans. The Brits hated us for giving human form to their rapacious colonial lust.2021, Robyn Andrews, Merin Simi Raj, Anglo-Indian Identity, page 401
  2. (UK, archaic, attributive, obsolete, offensive, slang) The speech style of these people.
    • He is no favourite with the pure native, whose language he speaks as his own in addition to the hybrid minced English (known as chee-chee), which he also employs.1873 October, Fraser's Magazine, section 437
    • There is no doubt that the 'Chee Chee twang,' which becomes so objectionable to every Englishman before he has been long in the East, was originally learned in the convent and the Brothers' school, and will be clung to as firmly as the queer turns of speech learned in the same place.1881 August 26, St. James's Gazette

Forms of chee chee

pluralchee chees
alternative formchee-chee

Origin of chee chee

Probably from Spanish chichi

Hobson-Jobson (see References) stated that the word is "said to be taken from chi (fie!), a common native (South Indian) interjection of remonstrance or reproof, supposed to be much used by the class in question. The term is, however, perhaps also a kind of onomatopoeia, indicating the mincing pronunciation which often characterises them." Hotten stated in his 1870 Slang Dictionary "it takes its origin from a very common expression of these half-caste females, "CHEE-CHEE," equivalent to our "Oh, fie! - Nonsense! - For shame!" Merriam-Webster (see References) states "probably from Hindi chī-chī fie!, literally, dirt".

Questions about chee chee

What does chee chee mean?
Chee chee means a breast, tit.
What part of speech is chee chee?
Chee chee is a noun.
What is the plural of chee chee?
The plural of chee chee is chee chees.

Words near chee chee in the dictionary

  1. Cheduba
  2. Chedworth
  3. chee
  4. chee bai
  5. chee bye
  6. chee chee
  7. chee chees
  8. chee cheong fun
  9. chee ko pek
  10. chee ko peks
  11. chee kofta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chee chee (page history and authors). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-chee chee.ogg.

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