Dictionary Definition
cheroot n : a cigar with both ends cut flat
User Contributed Dictionary
Extensive Definition
The Cheroot or Stogie is a cylindrical cigar with both ends clipped
during manufacture. Since cheroots do not taper, they are
inexpensive to roll mechanically, and their low cost makes them
particularly popular. Typically, stogies have a length of 3.5 to
6.5 inches, and a ring gauge of 34 to 37. (Ring gauge is a measure
of diameter, scaled in 64ths of an inch. A stogie is slightly over
1/2" in diameter.)
The term stogie is often misused to refer to any
cigar with a foul stench, or as slang, to a cigarette. Many stogies
are made of flavored tobaccos, and given that a stogie may last a
half hour, as opposed to the 2-8 minutes that a cigarette typically
lasts, there can be quite a stench produced.
The word stogie is short for Conestoga. The cigar
was the smoke of choice for teamsters driving Conestoga
wagons in the cigar-making Conestoga
valley area around Lancaster,
Pennsylvania. The word cheroot comes from French
cheroute, from Tamil curuttu/churuttu/shuruttu - roll of tobacco.
This word could have been absorbed into the French language from
Tamil during the early 16th century, when the French were trying to
stamp their presence in South India. The word could
have then been absorbed into English
from French.
Mark Twain on cigars
Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens is shown smoking a stogie in many of his photographs. His beloved did not approve of such a vile habit, and he made many jokes about this preference for inexpensive cigars. At one lecture, he indicated that he paid $5 a barrel for his cigars because he was incurably extravagant.In the March 26,
1911 New York
Times, Mark Twain was quoted posthumously from a 1905 letter to
L. M. Powers in which he wrote, "I know a good cigar better than
you do, for I have had sixty years' experience. No, that is not
what I mean; I mean I know a bad cigar better than anybody else. I
judge by the price only; if it costs above 5 cents, I know it to be
either foreign or half foreign and unsmokable.
"By me I have many boxes of Havana cigars, of all
prices, from 20 cents apiece up to $1.66 apiece; I bought none of
them; they were all presents; they are an accumulation of several
years. I have never smoked one of them, and never shall. I work
them off on the visitor. You shall have a chance when you
come."
Modern day stogie fans include Rush
Limbaugh, and filmmaker Francis
Ford Coppola, who offers his own private-label stogies for sale
at his winery.
Singer Roger
Miller, who was known for enjoying smoking in general, included
this line in his song, "King
of the Road": "I smoke old stogies I have found / Short, but
not too big around."
The Asian connection
Cheroots are traditional in Burma and India, consequently, popular among the British during the days of the British Empire. They are often associated with Burma in literature:- 'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
- An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
- An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
- An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
- An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat -- jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
-
- —Rudyard Kipling, (1892) "On the Road to Mandalay," from Barrack-room Ballads
- "My brother was unlike us in some things, Sahib. He was fond of the sharab called 'Whisky' and of dogs; he drank smoke from the cheroot after the fashion of the Sahib-log and not from the hookah nor the bidi; he wore boots; he struck with the clenched fist when angered; and never did he squat down upon his heels nor sit cross-legged upon the ground. Yet he was true Pathan in many ways during his life, and he died as a Pathan should, concerning his honour (and a woman). Yea—and in his last fight, ere he was hanged, he killed more men with his long Khyber knife, single-handed against a mob, than ever did lone man before with cold steel in fair fight."
-
- —Captain Percival Christopher Wren, I.A.R., 1912, Driftwood Spars
Apparently, Cheroot smoking was also associated
with resistance against tropical disease in India. Verrier
Elwin wrote in his 1957 forward to Leaves from the Jungle: Life
in a Gond Village,
"A final thing strikes me as I re-read the pages
of the Diary that follows is that I seem to have spent much of my
time falling ill. I attribute this to the fact that in those days I
was a non-smoker. Since I took to the cheroot, I have not had a
single attack of malaria, and my health improved enormously in
later years." (Leaves from the Jungle: Life in a Gond Village, OUP
1992, p.xxix)
A reader will note that malaria was most often
contracted by mosquito bites and most likely the cheroot's aroma,
by sticking to the skin and hiding the sweat's scent, which draws
mosquitoes, contributed to make the smoker less of a target for
their bites.