[In sense 1, taken by Dr. Johnson to be corrupted from chick, chicken: cf. the dialectal use in 2, also CHUCKIE.]
1. A familiar term of endearment, applied to husbands, wives, children, close companions.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. ii. 668. Sweet chuckes, beat not the bones of the buried. Ibid. (1599), Hen. V., III. ii. 26. Vse lenitie sweet Chuck.
1607. Barley-Breake (1877), 8. I tell thee, Chuck, thy Father doth disdaine, To see his child so ruffled by a knaue.
1628. Earle, Microcosm., xxxvi. 80. One that does nothing without his chuck, that is his wife.
1770. Foote, Lame Lover, I. 26. Why not, chuck?
1845. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights, xxxiv. 279. Will you come Chuck?
1866. Kingsley, Herew., I. xix. 346. Little Winter, little Winter, my chuck, my darling, my mad fellow.
2. Chick, chicken, fowl. north. dial. Also fig.
1675. Cotton, Poet. Wks. (1765), 201. Such lucky chucks there’s no great need on.
1785. Burns, Jolly Beggars, ix. But up arose the martial chuck, And laid the loud uproar.
1876. Mid-Yorksh. Gloss. (E. D. S.), Chuck … in the Craven dialect … a hen.
1878. N. W. Lincolnsh. Gloss., Chuck, a child’s name for a hen.
1888. Sheffield Gloss., Chuck or chuckie, a domestic fowl. A word used by children.
