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Word of the Week (132): CHIBOUK (probability 30992), by David Sutton

A CHIBOUK or CHIBOUQUE is a kind of long straight-stemmed tobacco pipe. Pipe-smoking is, I believe, less fashionable now than in my youth, when every other schoolmaster seemed to puff away emitting clouds of noxious fumes from his briar, but a nice range of words is still with us, from the homely CUTTY, a Scots word for a short clay pipe, perhaps the same as what the Irish would call a DUDEEN or DUDHEEN, through to the Native American decorated ceremonial CALUMET and the Oriental pipe known as a HOOKA or HOOKAH. Other names for the HOOKA are SHISHA and NARGHILE (with variants NARGHILLY, NARGHILY, NARGILE, NARGILEH, NARGILY, NARGUILEH).

Other pipe-related words include STUMMEL, designating the bowl and adjacent part of a tobacco pipe, STAPPLE, the stem of a pipe, CHILLUM, the part of a hookah containing the bowl and tobacco and DOTTLE or DOTTEL, the unburnt or partially burnt tobacco caked in the bowl of a pipe that needs to be scraped out when the pipe becomes DOTTLED. I am sure it is just a coincidence that DOTTLE as an adjective (DOTTLER, DOTTLEST) means foolish and that no reflection is intended on the fine if malodorous mentors of my youth.


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