Obs. Forms: 5 chiete, 5–6 chet, chete, 6 chett, 6–7 cheate, cheat, (8–9 Hist. cheat, chete). [Derivation uncertain. Not in actual use since 17th c.]
Wheaten bread of the second quality, made of flour more coarsely sifted than that used for MANCHET, the finest quality. Comb. cheat-bread, -loaf.
c. 1450. Bk. Curtasye, III. 452. Manchet and chet bred he shalle take.
1461–83. Househ. Ord., 69. To make continually of every busshell halfe chiete halfe rounde … xxvij loves. Ibid. (1526), 163. One chet loafe, one manchet, one gallon of ale.
1570. T. Wilson, trans. Demosthenes’ Olynthiacs, Ep. to Sir W. Cecil. Lyke to them that eating fine Manchet, are angry with others that feede on Cheate breade.
1577. B. Googe, Heresbach’s Husb., VII. (1586), 26 b. The second called Siligo they used in their fynest Cheate.
1577. Harrison, England, II. vi. (1877), I. 154. The second [kind of bread] is the cheat or wheaton bread, so named bicause the coloure therof resembleth the graie or yellowish wheat.
1616. Chapman, Batrachom. (1624), 3. Their purest cheat, Thrice boulted, kneaded, and subdued in past.
1655. Moufet & Bennet, Health’s Improv. (1746), 339. Our finest Manchet is made without Leaven, which maketh Cheat-Bread to be the lighter … and also the more wholesome.
[1780. Arnot, Hist. Edin., ii. (1816), 45. They had four different kinds of wheaten bread, the finest called Manchet, the second Cheat, or trencher bread, [etc.].
1860. Our Eng. Home, 79.]
