Definitions

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

  • noun Alternative form of checkerwork.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

chequer +‎ work

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Examples

  • As we have explained more fully in a previous book*, we inherit this system of historical pigeonholes from Christendom; that arbitrary chequerwork of hundred-year blocks was imposed upon the entire Mediterranean and Atlantic literatures for two thousand years, and it still distorts the views of history of all but the alertest minds.

    The Shape of Things to Come Herbert George 2006

  • And as the human life is properly said to be chequerwork, no doubt but a person of her prudence will make the best of it, and set off so much good against so much bad, in order to strike as just a balance as possible.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • The base of the apartment is about one hundred and forty feet square, and the domed ceiling at a height of one hundred and fifty feet rises from a square tower whose sides are round-topped windows of blue and white glass in chequerwork.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. Various

  • If this were not so, everything would look flat, and then one could distinguish nothing save only a chequerwork of colours.

    Albert Durer T. Sturge Moore 1907

  • The wild history of Ireland contains many a frightful tale, but also many an action of the noblest order; and the short sketch given by Maria Edgeworth of her ancestry, presents such a chequerwork of the gold and the lead that it is almost impossible to separate them.

    A Book of Golden Deeds 1864

  • Edgeworth of her ancestry, presents such a chequerwork of the gold and the lead that it is almost impossible to separate them.

    A Book of Golden Deeds Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • "I would not be a traitor," returned Humfrey, as he lay on his back, looking up through the chequerwork of the branches of the trees towards the sky.

    Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland Charlotte Mary Yonge 1862

  • a quasi-military footing; he wore a distinctive uniform, was subject to stringent discipline, and his premises, as well as the hospitals, bore the characteristic black-and-yellow chequerwork.

    The Shape of Things to Come Herbert George 2006

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