Skip navigation.

char - What does it mean?

Definition of 'char'

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) . More at chore, ajar.

Alternative forms

* chare

Noun

(en-noun)
  • (obsolete) A time; a turn or occasion.
  • (obsolete) A turn of work; a labour or item of business.
  • An odd job, a chore or piece of housework.
  • A charlady, a woman employed to do housework; cleaning lady.
    • I had to scrub the kitchen today, because the char couldn't come.
    Synonyms
    * charlady * charwoman * cleaning lady * cleaning woman

    Verb

  • (obsolete) To turn, especially away or aside.
  • To work, especially to do housework; to work by the day, without being a regularly hired servant.
  • * 1893', She explained that she was the commissionaire's wife, who did the ' charing , and I gave her the order for the coffee. — Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Naval Treaty’ (Norton 2005, p.677)
  • * 1897 , , chapter 2
    • Her husband had been a soldier, and from a grateful country she received a pension large enough to keep her from starvation, and by charring and doing such odd jobs as she could get she earned a little extra to supply herself with liquor.
  • (obsolete) To perform; to do; to finish.
  • * Old proverb
    • That char is chared , as the good wife said when she had hanged her husband.
    (Nares)
  • To work or hew (stone, etc.).

    • Etymology 2

    Origin unknown, perhaps from Celtic.

    Alternative forms

    * charr

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • One of the several species of fishes of the genus Salvelinus .
    • “Among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char .”

    Etymology 3

    Verb

    (charr)
  • (ergative) To burn something to charcoal.
  • To burn slightly or superficially so as to affect colour.
    • Synonyms
    * coal * blacken, scorch, sear, singe

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • A charred substance.
    • Synonyms
    * charcoal

    Etymology 4

    Abbreviation of (m).

    Noun

    (en-noun)
  • (computing|programming) A character (text element such as a letter or symbol), whose data size is commonly one or several bytes.
  • * Java programming language tutorial [http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/i18n/text/terminology.html]
  • * 1975 , Computerworld - 23 avr. 1975 - Page 21
    • The unit is an 80-column, 30 char. /sec dot matrix printer which uses a 5 by 7 font.
    A Unicode code unit is a 16-bit char value. For example, imagine a String that contains the letters "abc" followed by the Deseret LONG I, which is represented with two char values. That string contains four characters, four code points, but five code units.
  • * 1997 , Cay S Horstmann, Gary Cornell, Core Java 1.1: Fundamentals
    • Chars can be considered as integers if need be without an explicit cast.
  • * 1998 , John R Hubbard, Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Fundamentals of Computing with C++
    • Then since each char occupies one byte, these four bytes represent the three letters 'B', 'y', 'e', and the null character NUL.
  • * 2000 , Ken Brownsey, The essence of data structures using C++
    • Thus string variables are pointer variables to chars .
  • * 2002 , Nell B. Dale, Michael McMillan, Visual Basic .NET: a laboratory course - Page 25
    • .NET uses the Unicode character set in which each char constant or variable takes up two bytes (16 bits) of storage.
    Derived terms
    * signed char * unsigned char
    Related terms
    * byte * double * float * int * long * short

    Etymology 5

    From (etyl) , with intrusive r .

    Noun

    (-)
  • (British) tea (drink)

    • Anagrams

    * English nouns with irregular plurals English terms with multiple etymologies ----

    Similar to 'char'

    choir, car, chair, cor, czar, cheer, charr, cur, curr, coir, carr, cower, cair, cour, chor, chear, chur, coyer, chaur, chirr, churr, csar, cooer