Forms: 7 chince, 7–8 chink, 8 chintse, 9 chintz, 7– chinch. See also CIMICE. [a. Sp. chinche, It. cimice:—L. cimic-em bug.] 1. The bed- or house-bug. (A name now confined to U.S.)
a. 1625. Fletcher, Loues Pilgr., I. i. (in Spain) Theod. Will you shew me in? Hostess. Yes marry will I, sir: and pray that not a flea or a chink vex you.
1645. Evelyn, Diary, 29 Sept. The bedsteads in Italy are of forged iron gilded, since it is impossible to keepe the wooden ones from the chimices.
1665. G. Havers, P. della Valle’s Trav. E. India, 372. In that season we were very much troubled with Chinches, another sort of little troublesome and offensive creatures, like little Tikes.
1673. Ray, Trav. (1738), I. 352. Chinces, or wall-lice, which are very noisome … by their bitings in the night-time.
1682. Wheler, Journ. Greece, I. 16. The Floor, so furnished with Chinches, Flees and Emmots.
1710. Ray, Hist. Insect., 7. Cimex, the Chinche, or Wall-louse … in Angliâ paucis noti.
1730. Southall, Buggs, 7. He … asked if Chintses, (so Buggs are by Negroes and some others there called) had bit me?
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 434. The Chink or Bug … very common in Jamaica.
1844. G. W. Kendall, Texan Santa Fé Exped., II. xi. 229. Scarcely had we touched the mattresses before we were visited by myriads of chinches!
1851. R. Burton, Goa, 4. The impolite animal which the transatlantics delicately designate a ‘chintz.’
2. Chinch-, chink-bug (U.S.): ‘an insect or bug, resembling the bed-bug in its disgusting odour, which is very destructive to wheat and other grasses’ (Webster); also chinch-bug fly.
1750. G. Hughes, Barbados, 84. The Buonavista Chink. This is a small green flattish fly … and smells, when killed, like a bug.
1816. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1843), I. 137. America suffers … in its wheat and maize from the attack of … the chintz bug-fly.
1886. Edin. Rev., Oct., 356. Corn destroyed by the chinch-bug.
1887. Standard, 19 Sept., 2/2. (Iowa) The damage done by chinch bugs.
