Also 8–9 checque, 9 cheque. [Goes with CHECK sb.2, either as short for checker, chequer; or aphetic f. *escheck, a. OF. eschequier, in Godefroy only in pa. pple. eschequié, eschiqué in same sense; in Eng. also the pa. pple. CHECKED, CHEQUED, is the part most in use.]
1. trans. To mark with a chess-board pattern, mark out or cut in squares (obs.); to mark with a pattern of crossing lines.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 72. Chekkyn [1499 checken], scaccifico.
c. 1460. J. Russell, Bk. Nurture, in Babees Bk. (1868), 141. Whan ye þat venesoun so haue chekkid hit, with þe fore parte of youre knyfe þat ye hit owt kytt.
1513. Bk. Keruynge, ibid. 273. Custarde, cheke them inche square that your souerayne may ete therof.
1800. Canning, Anti-Jacobin, Rovers. Sweet kerchief, check’d with heavenly blue.
2. transf. To variegate with rays or bands of different colors; to chequer. rare.
1590. Greene, Arcadia (1616), 44. He … checkt the night with the golden rayes that gleamed from his lookes.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., I. 184. A glimpse of moonlight checq’d the plain.
† 3. fig. To chequer, diversify, cloud. Obs.
[1639. Fuller, Holy War, I. xiv. (1840), 24. Their first setting forth … was checked with bad success.]
1790. Town Talk, 5. The boy’s countenance, that was chequed and overcast with blindness.
Check v.3 var. of CHICK.
