char

verb

1. (ergative)To burn something to charcoal; to be burnt to charcoal.

   “I charred the wood.”

   “The wood charred.”

2. (transitive)To burn (something) severely, so as to blacken it.

   “The fire charred her down to the bone.”

3. (transitive)To burn (something) slightly or superficially so as to affect colour.

   “The chef charred the scallops just right.”

4. (obsolete)To turn, especially away or aside.
5. To work, especially to do housework; to work by the day, without being a regularly hired servant.

   “She explained that she was the commissionaire's wife, who did the charing, and I gave her the order for the coffee.”

   “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.”

6. (obsolete)To perform; to do; to finish.

   “All's chared when he is gone.”

7. To work or hew (stone, etc.)

noun

1. A charred substance.
2. Any of the several species of fishes of the genus Salvelinus.

   “Among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char.”

3. (obsolete)A time; a turn or occasion.
4. (obsolete)A turn of work; a labour or item of business.
5. An odd job, a chore or piece of housework.

   “When thou hast done this chare, I’ll give thee leave to play till doomsday.”

6. A charlady, a woman employed to do housework; cleaning lady.

   “I had to scrub the kitchen today, because the char couldn't come.”

   “But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit's except the charwoman wiping over the “lino” in the passage. “Nobody here yet, Miss,” said the char.”

   “The rollers wore grooves in the nursery floors and the chars complained of getting splinters in their hands while scrubbing.”

7. A character (text element such as a letter or symbol).

   “The unit is an 80-column, 30 char. /sec dot matrix printer which uses a 5 by 7 font.”

   “Chars can be considered as integers if need be without an explicit cast.”

   “Then since each char occupies one byte, these four bytes represent the three letters 'B', 'y', 'e', and the null character NUL.”

   “When a 32-bit int value is stored to a 16-bit char variable, information can be lost if the 16 most significant bits are not zeroes in the int value.”

   “Thus string variables are pointer variables to chars.”

8. (colloquial)A character (being involved in the action of a story).

   “In fact, when I somewhat lack inspiration, I tend to convert my characters according to the rules of a game which universe is close enough (I did it for some of the chars in my WIP, taking the Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook).”

   “WoW exp I feel that it is just a progress from Lv70 to 80 and then back to square one to raid\arena or die expansion. So I don’t see the point of going back just to level my char to 80 and let them idle at end-game.”

   “The class (an adventuring style (e.g. mage, warrior, hunter, etc.) of the character, which determines abilities, weapons, etc.) choice often also influences the gaming and language of a character during role-playing. As one of the participants states: / Character bound politeness is part of some of my chars – as well as impoliteness is. An example: A Paladin or Priest has to be polite in RPG according to his profession to the light, a Warlock is the opposite as well as rogues etc.”

9. (British, alt-of, alternative, uncountable)Alternative form of cha (“tea”).

   ““’Ullo, cock,” it said, amiably enough. “So you’ve come to, ’ave yer? ’Ang on a bit, an’ I’ll get you a cup o’ char.” And it vanished again.”

name

1. A nickname for Charlotte
2. A nickname for Charlene
3. A short river in west Dorset, England; in full, the River Char.