Chode or Chod: A Newish Dirty Word at Bill Casselman's Words of the World & Canadian Word of the Day www.billcasselman.com

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chode/ chod — a newish dirty word

Chode is a neovulgarism, although it appears to have resurfaced big-time in North America, after being first planted in the rich loam of English sometime in the nineteenth century across the pond in Great Britain. Nowadays there are two separate forms of the word: chode is American; chod is British. The /ch/ of check begins both forms. The American chode rhymes with the word toad. The British chod is pronounced with the /od/ of odd. But let us begin with its semantics.

Chode or chod means:

1) A short, fat penis that is wider than it is longer
2) A vulgar synonym for the perineum, the area between the scrotum/vagina and the anus
3) A derogatory term used to insult males in sentences like “Check his chode, like, with a magnifying glass.” or “Rode that chode? Nothing happening, right?”

Etymology

Chode is a variant of the word choda ‘penis, fuck-stick’ related to the Hindi/Urdu verb chodna ‘to fuck.’ In Urdu, chod is ‘fucker.’ Maderchod is Urdu for ‘motherfucker.’ It is literally that; so don’t speak it aloud and expect to live.

Chod is the Hindi/Urdu slang word for ‘fuck.’ Used as a verb or a noun, chod is the most common word for fuck used in the Indian subcontinent, chiefly heard in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The word is frequently used in slang compounds like maderchod ‘motherfucker,’ behanchod ‘sister-fucker,’ betichod ‘daughter-fucker,’ chorichod ‘girl-fucker’ and kudichod ‘girl-fucker.’ A foreigner, before using any of these vile terms, should convey by deed all lands and properties, write out, have lawyered and make final all testamentary dispositions and premortal bequeathments.

The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2005, 2 vols., Routledge), a totally estimable and delightful tome, quotes the Journal of Sex Research stating that chod is inoffensive nonsense slang for penis or twat, implying that Brits speaking one of the northern dialects made up the word.

I do not agree. Chod is a word brought back from India hundreds of years ago when Englishmen went out to India during the Raj etc. and brought back to England upon their return all manner of foreign words that settled comfortably or uncomfortably into our English wordstock, terms like khaki, bungalow, shampoo and chod.

In Hindi खकि khākī means ‘of dust colour, dusty.’

Hindi बंगला banglA and Urdu بنگلہ banglA, mean literally, ‘(house) in the Bengal style,’ that is, a bungalow.

Shampoo derives from chāmpo ( चाँपो ) and is the imperative of chāmpnā ( चाँपना ) ‘to smear, knead the muscles, massage.’ The scalp massage was performed with an oily mixture just before a bath.

So there is nothing bizarre, nonsensical or unknown about chod. It’s the common Indian word for prick, dick, schlong. With a few semantic variants, it means the same thing in England, where, obviously, schoolboys picked it up from returning soldiers, minor functionaries or bank accountants freshly returned from India. In Geordie, one of the northern British dialects, chod is the glans, the head of the penis.

A Note on the Title Photo

The title photo is of one of the tamer erotic sculptures from several temples in the little town of Khajuraho in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Khajuraho was named after its groves of date palms. Hindi for ‘date palm’ is khajur.

Use Google Images to examine some of these gorgeous stone hymns to sexual delight. Or, if you are a repressed born-again wacko, run screaming from the room, shouting “Hide the kids!” You will, obedient to your fascist nature, not want your children to see the unashamed Indian delight in human sexuality. You’ll want to mess the kiddies up good with smut-dense repression of all healthy feelings about sex, have one of them shuffling up to her matrimonial bed on her wedding night and, all red in the face, lifting back the bed covers to ask the groom, “Brad, what’s a penis?”

It won’t matter to the bad parents of this earth that UNESCO has designated the erotic monuments of the Khajuraho temples as a world heritage site, to commemorate and glorify humanity’s natural generative impulses. But if you escaped your parents’ destroying our natural joy in sex, do look at these awesome sculptures, India’s sweet gift of love to the world. As for all you American fundie lunatics, ah, go blush in the dark. “Brad, turn the lights out. God will see us!”