Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A routine or minor duty or task. synonym: task.
  • noun An unpleasant or burdensome task.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as chare.
  • noun A chorus; a choir.
  • Same as char, 5.
  • noun A char, chare, or small job; a task; especially, a piece of minor domestic work, as about a house or barn, of regular or frequent recurrence: generally in the plural.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun United States A small job; in the pl., the regular or daily light work of a household or farm, either within or without doors.
  • noun obsolete A choir or chorus.
  • intransitive verb United States To do chores.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb UK, informal To steal.
  • noun A task, especially a difficult, unpleasant, or routine one.
  • noun obsolete A choir or chorus.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a specific piece of work required to be done as a duty or for a specific fee

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Variant of char.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English cherre ("odd job, turn, occasion, business"), from Old English ċerr, ċierr ("a turn"), from ċierran ("to turn"), from Proto-Germanic *karzijanan (“to turn”), from Proto-Indo-European *gers- (“to bend, turn”). Cognate with Old Saxon kērian, Old High German chēran (German kehren ("to turn")). See also char.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly derived from the Romani word chōr ("thief"), see also Geordie word chor.

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