Word.ws English Dictionary

chetty

chetty noun: a member of one of various South Indian castes of merchants, money-lenders and land-owners.

Noun

chetty (plural chetties)

  1. A member of one of various South Indian castes of merchants, money-lenders and land-owners.
    • A contract is made, usually by the house itself, with the chetties for such a quantity of cotton of such a quality, and the very lowest sum is fixed. The chetty, finding he cannot get a price that would justify the delivery of such cotton as he has contracted for, agrees to it, well knowing that...1851, J. Forbes Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India, and Elsewhere, London: Smith, Elder & Co., page 87
    • Far too many Burmese farmers are heavily in debt to the "chetties," the money-lending caste of the Madras coast.1882, Shway Yoe, chapter XXIII, in The Burman: His Life and Notions, volume 1, London: Macmillan & Co., page 298

chetty meaning in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Myanmar

chetty in Tamil

South Asian subgroup
செட்டியார் ceṭṭiyār

chetty in Telugu

South Asian subgroup
చెట్టి ceṭṭi

chetty in Malayalam

South Asian subgroup
ചെട്ടിയാർ ceṭṭiyāṟ

chetty in Myanmar

South Asian subgroup
ချစ်တီး hkyacti:

Forms of chetty

pluralchetties
alternative formchitty

Origin of chetty

Ultimately from Sanskrit श्रेष्ठ (śreṣṭha) or श्रेष्ठीन् (śreṣṭhīn).

Questions about chetty

What does chetty mean?
Chetty means a member of one of various South Indian castes of merchants, money-lenders and land-owners.
What is chetty in Tamil?
Chetty in Tamil is செட்டியார் (ceṭṭiyār). See Chetty meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is chetty?
Chetty is a noun.
What is the plural of chetty?
The plural of chetty is chetties.

Words near chetty in the dictionary

  1. chetti
  2. chetties
  3. chettis
  4. Chettle
  5. Chettles
  6. chetty
  7. chetverik
  8. chetveriks
  9. chetvert
  10. chetverts
  11. Chetwode

Source and license

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