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chest

nounverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • Scotland//t͡ʃɪst//
  • //t͡ʃɛst//

A box, now usually a large strong box with a secure convex lid.

noun

  1. 1

    A box, now usually a large strong box with a secure convex lid.

    The clothes are kept in a chest.

    But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge,[…].

  2. 2

    obsoleteA coffin.

  3. 3

    The place in which public money is kept; a treasury.

    You can take the money from the chest.

  4. 4

    A chest of drawers.

  5. 5

    The portion of the human body from the base of the neck to the top of the abdomen; the homologous area in some other animals.

    Holonyms: torso, trunk < body

    She had a sudden pain in her chest.

    An anteroposterior radiograph found opacities throughout her chest.

  6. 6

    The front (anterior) surface of this portion of the torso.

    Holonyms: thorax; torso, trunk

    He has a tattoo on his chest, and another on his upper back.

    The wild gorilla was beating its chest.

  7. 7

    A female human's breasts.

    He avoided being seen gazing at her chest, although he dearly longed to stare.

  8. 8

    A hit or blow made with one's chest.

    She scored with a chest into the goal.

Etymology

From Middle English cheste, chiste, from Old English ċest, ċist (“chest, casket; coffin; rush basket; box”), from Proto-West Germanic *kistu (“chest, box”), from Latin cista (“chest, box”), from Ancient Greek κίστη (kístē, “chest, box, basket, hamper”).

verb

  1. 1

    To hit with one's chest (front of one's body)

    Pedersen fed Kalinic in West Brom's defensive third and his chested lay-off was met on the burst by the Canadian who pelted by Tamas and smashed the ball into the top of Myhill's net.

  2. 2

    To deposit in a chest.

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo place in a coffin.

  4. 4

    To handle, deal with.

    Children being loud and annoying in public is a small price to pay for living and participating in society. Everyone goes through this cycle and you too were once that child. We can’t just lock them indoors. Chest it, sorry.

noun

  1. 1

    Debate; quarrel; strife; enmity.

Etymology

From Middle English chest, cheste, cheeste, cheaste, from Old English ċēast, ċēas (“strife, quarrel, quarrelling, contention, murmuring, sedition, scandal; reproof”). Related to Old Frisian kāse (“strife, contention”), Old Saxon caest (“quarrel, dispute”), Old High German kōsa (“speech, story, account”).

Forms

plural
chests
past tense
chested
past participle
chested
present participle
chesting
third person singular
chests
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).