Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. See shruff.
- n. In India, a banker or money-changer.
- n. In China, Japan, etc., a native teller or silver-expert, employed by banks and mercantile establishments to inspect and count all dollars that reach the firm, and detect and throw out the bad or defaced ones.
- To inspect for the purpose of detecting and throwing out what is bad: as, to shroff dollars.
Wiktionary
- n. India A money-changer or banker in South Asia.
- n. Hong Kong A cashier at a car park.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. East Indies A banker, or changer of money.
Etymologies
- Anglo-Indian corruption of saraf. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Guests came face to face with two mandarins, a wedding bride, a woman with bound feet and her child, a schoolmaster, a shroff (money changer), three soldiers, and a Buddhist priest with a shaved head (fig. 9.7).”
The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876
“The ape cried, "I am the ape of Abu al-Sa'adat the Jew, the shroff.”
“This table is covered with a fine grass mat and surrounded on three sides with benches for the players, while on the fourth side sit the croupier and the banker or shroff.”
“Large sums are continually won and lost, it being a common thing to see gamblers, both men and women, after staking their last cash hand over watches, jewellery and other valuables to the shroff for valuation, and hazard all on a final throw to retrieve their losses.”
“Shanghai Bank was swindled seriously by a shroff who had done honest duty for a great number of years.”
“Perhaps Jinendra felt compassionate toward a poor shroff (money-lender) who can not defend his suit successfully without that title-deed.”
“He left his affairs in the hands of the shroff, the Chinese accountant, who could be trusted to manage them for a short time.”
“The shroff was very fearful, but as he was to be compradore now, to do the work of a”
“He stood eyeing the young Chinese accountant, and the shroff looked him back fairly in the eye, and the same thought passed through both minds.”
“So Withers and the shroff continued their desolate journey, day by day, across the plains, over such roads as are not, save in North”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shroff’.
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phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
sabaton, sabbatarian, sabbulonarium, sabelline, sabin, sable, sabliere, sabot, sabretache, sabulous, saburration, saccade and 1593 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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VanishedOne's Words
facipulator, fetiphobia, gules, boustrophedon, reverse boustroph..., unreal, ensiform, xiphoid, romhack, heritage, floccinaucinihili..., johnian and 1004 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for shroff.
vanishedone T.L.S.: 'Burton’s language, too, is eccentric and pretty unreadable, such that a not unlikely title might be “The Shroff who Futtered his Cadette with the Two Coyntes�? (I am making this up, but the words are Burton’s). Such words may be useful for players of Scrabble; modern readers deserve something better.'
O.E.D. to the rescue: a shroff is 'a banker or money-changer in the East; in the Far East, a native expert employed to detect bad coin'. No luck with futter as a verb, though; it's given only (under futtah) as an early spelling of whata (Maori), 'a food-store raised on posts'. Wiktionary says, however, that it's Burton's own coinage, from foutre. A cadette is a younger daughter or sister... Coynte has been discussed before. And that, clearly, is how you get biologically improbable filth into the pages of a respectable newspaper. Jan 21, 2009