subs. (colloquial).—1. A thick piece or lump of wood, bread, coal, etc.
1691. RAY, East and South Country Words (E.D.S.) Chuck, a great chip … In other countries [= districts] they call it a CHUNK. [M.]
1787. GROSE, A Provincial Glossary, etc., ‘Chuck.’ Chuck, a great chip, Suss. In other counties called a CHUNK or junk.
1876. BESANT and RICE, The Golden Butterfly, ch. xxix. Why not keep a clerk to read for you, and pay out the information in small CHUNKS? I should like to tackle Mr. Carlyle that way.
c. 1880. Broadside Ballad, ‘The Hungry Man from Clapham.’
| He’d eat everything there was in the place, | |
| He bit a CHUNK from his mother-in-law’s face. |
2. (streets’).—A school-board officer.
1879. J. RUTHERFORD (‘Thor Fredur’), Sketches from Shady Places, p. 105. Here they gambol about like rabbits, until somebody raises the cry, ‘Nix! the CHUNK!’—(the slang term for School Board officer; ‘CHUNK’ being cockney for piece of wood or board).
