Chapter Chancellor of the Exchequer to Charge of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Chancellor of the Exchequer to Charge

Chancellor of the Exchequer (The ). The minister of finance in the Privy Council.

Chancery The part of the Court occupied by the lawyers.
   To get a man's head into chancery is to get it under your arm, where you can pummel it as long as you like, and he cannot get it free without great difficulty. The allusion is to the long and exhausting nature of a Chancery suit. If a man once gets his head there, the lawyers punish him to their heart's content.

“When I can perform my mile in eight minutes, or a little less, I feel as if I had old Time's head in chancery.”- Holmes: Autocrat, chap. vii. p. 191.

Chaneph The island of religious hypocrites, inhabited by sham saints, tellers of beads, mumblers of ave marias, and friars who lived by begging. (The word meant hypocrite in Hebrew.) (See Rabelais: Pantagruel, iv. 63, 64.)

Change Ringing the changes. Repeating the same thing in different ways. The allusion is to bell-ringing.
    To know how many changes can be rung on a peal of bells, multiply the known preceding number by the next subsequent one, thus: 1 bell no change; 2 bells, 1 X 2 = 2 changes; 3 bells, 2 X 3 = 6 changes; 4 bells, 6 X 4 = 24 changes; 5 bells, 24 X 5 = 120 changes; 6 bells, 720 changes, etc.
   Take your change out of that. Said to a person who insults you when you give him a quid pro quo, and tell him to take out the change. It is an allusion to shopping transactions, where you settle the price of the article, and put the surplus or change in your pocket.

Changeling (2 syl.) A peevish, sickly child. The notion used to be that the fairies took a healthy child, and left in its place one of their starveling elves which never did kindly

“Oh, that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children as they lay,
And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.”
Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV., i. 1.

Chant du Depart After the Marseillaise, the most celebrated song of the first French Revolution. It was written by M. J. Chénier for a public festival, held June 11th, 1794, to commemorate the taking of the Bastille. The music is by Méhul. A mother, an old man, a child, a wife, a girl, and three warriors sing a verse in turn, and the sentiment of each is, “We give up our claims on the men of France for the good of the Republic.” (See page 217, col. 1, Carmagnole.)

“La republique nous appelle,
Sachons vaincre on sachons perir,
Un Français doit vivre pour elle,
Pour elle un Français is doit mourir.”
M. J. Chenier.

The Republic invites,
Let us conquer or fall;
For her Frenchmen live,
And die at her call. E. C. B.

Chantage A subsidy paid to a journal. Certain journals will pronounce a company to be a “bubble one” unless the company advertises in its columns; and at gaming resorts will publish all the scandals and mischances connected with the place unless the proprietors subsidise them, or throw a sop to Cerberus. This subsidy is technically known as Chantage in France and Italy.

Chanticleer The cock, in the tale of Reynard the Fox, and in Chaucer's Nonne Prestes Tale. The word means “shrill-singer.” (French chanter-clair, to sing clairment, i.e. distinctly.)

“My lungs began to crow like chanticleer.”
Shakespeare: As you Like It, ii. 7

Chaonian Bird (The ). The dove. So called because it delivered the oracles of Chaonia (Dodona).

“But the mild swallow none with toils infest,
And none the soft Chaonian bird molest.”
Ovid: Art of Love, ii.

Chaonian Food Acorns. So called from the oak trees of Chaonia or Dodona. Some think beech-mast is meant, and tell us that the bells of the oracle were hung on beech-trees, not on oaks.
    The Greek word is fhgoz; Latin, fagus. Hence Strabo, Dwdwuhu, fhgou te Pelasgwu edrauou hkeu (He to Dodona came, and the hallowed oak or beech [fagus ], the seat of the Pelasgi.) Now, “fagus” means the food- tree, and both acorns and mast are food, so nothing determinate can be derived from going to the root of the word, and, as it is extremely doubtful where Dodona was, we get no light by referring to the locality. Our text says Chaonia (in Epirus), others place it in Thessaly.