Brewer's: Chouse

(1 syl.). To cheat out of something. Gifford says the interpreter of the Turkish embassy in England is called chiaus, and in 1609 this chiaus contrived to defraud his government of 4,000, an enormous sum at that period. From the notoriety of the swindle the word chiaus or to chouse was adopted.

“He is no chiaus.”

Ben Jonson: Alchemist, i. 1 (1610).

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