Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The chough, or red-legged crow, Pyrrhocorax graculus.
  • noun The most generally known species of the family Turbinellidæ, Turbinella pyrum.

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

  • noun (Zoöl.) The East Indian name for the large spiral shell of several species of sea conch much used in making bangles, esp. Turbinella pyrum. Called also chank shell.

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

  • noun East India The large spiral shell of several species of sea conch, much used in making bangles, especially Turbinella pyrum.
  • verb US To eat noisily; to champ or chomp

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Speaking of the "chank" shell, that is the name given in the East Indies to certain varieties of the _voluta gravis_, fished up by divers in the

    The English Governess at the Siamese Court Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok Anna Harriette Leonowens 1874

  • On Valentines Day I heard a band playing that chanky-chank mixtec music, and firecrackers going off, and the bells ringing madly at the church around the corner – It was a neighborhood fiesta.

    Being in Oaxaca in February 2007

  • Notable among these was Ta-chank-pee Ho-tank-a, or His War Club Speaks Loud, who foretold a year in advance the details of a great war-party against the Ojibways.

    The Soul of the Indian 1911

  • Thumb setting to work again, they heard very clearly the coins ringing, chink, chank, as they struck one against the other.

    Grimm's Fairy Stories Gebr��der Grimm 1909

  • And when a pounded away at a shoe, and her young arm going like a flail -- chink, chank -- chink, chank -- and th 'white spatters o' hot iron flying this way and that from th 'anvil, meseemed

    A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales Am��lie Rives 1904

  • "I do declar ', it sets me plumb catawampus ter hev ter listen ter them blacksmiths, up yander ter thar shop, at thar everlastin' chink - chank an 'chink-chank, considerin' the tales I hearn 'bout 'em, when I war down ter the quiltin 'at M'ria's house in the Cove."

    In the Tennessee mountains, pseud. Charles Egbert Craddock 1885

  • Buddhists, by pouring upon his forehead consecrated water from a chank-shell.

    The English Governess at the Siamese Court Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok Anna Harriette Leonowens 1874

  • Speaking of the “chank” shell, that is the name given in the East Indies to certain varieties of the voluta gravis, fished up by divers in the Gulf of Manaar, on the northwest coast of Ceylon.

    The English Governess at the Siamese Court Leonowens, Anna H 1870

  • The king, his courtiers, and the chief priests being gathered round him, thanksgiving is offered up; and then the lordly beast is knighted, after the ancient manner of the Buddhists, by pouring upon his forehead consecrated water from a chank-shell.

    The English Governess at the Siamese Court Leonowens, Anna H 1870

  • Next he waved mysteriously a few gold coins, then dropped twenty-one drops of cold water out of a jewelled shell, [Footnote: The conch, or chank shell] and finally, muttering something in Sanskrit, and placing in my hand a small silk bag containing a title of nobility and the number and description of the roods of lands pertaining to it, bade me rise, “Chow Khoon Crue Yai”!

    The English Governess at the Siamese Court Leonowens, Anna H 1870

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  • Ornamental daggers dulled by time, palm-leaf scrolls bearing royal signatures, statuettes of the Buddha, tooled betel boxes, gold inlaid areca nut cutters, perforated chank shells, a jumble of tortoiseshell and silver hair combs: they all gave off a disagreeable odor of dust and neglect.

    --Michelle de Kretser, 2004, The Hamilton Case

    November 10, 2007

  • according to image search, it's also "The Elvis of Fonts"

    October 31, 2009

  • "Long before then there had been visitors from Mesopotamia: pieces of teak--another attraction of the coast--were found by Leonard Wooley at Ur of the Chaldees, dating from around 600 B.C.*"

    "* Contacts may well have been still older. Excavations of Mesopotamian cities of the third millennium B.C. have turned up specimens of the Indian chank, a conch shell found only in the coastal waters of southern India and Sri Lanka."

    --Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 16-17.

    November 28, 2016