chillum

English

Alternative forms

• cheelam, chelam, chilam, chillam

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindi चिलम (cilam), from Classical Persian چلم (čilam).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɪləm/

Noun

chillum (plural chillums)

1. A conical pipe used for smoking marijuana, usually made of fired clay, porcelain, soapstone, glass or, more rarely, wood.
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter LVIII, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 521:

     He could not think of moving till his baggage was cleared, or of travelling until he could do so with his chillum.

   • c. 1893, "Note by Babu Abhilas Chandra Mukerji, second Inspector of Excise, on the Origin and History of Trinath Worship in Eastern Bengal", in Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-4

     The votaries should assemble at night and worship with flowers. The ganja should be washed in the manner in which people wash ganja for smoking. The worshipper must fill three chillums with equal quantities of ganja, observing due awe and reverence.

   • 2007, Dolf Hartsuiker, Holy Smoke‎^[1]:

     Especially for him I’ve kept some hash that I had gotten from another sadhu, a piece of black Manali of passable quality. In my hotel-room I cut it in two pieces — each sufficient for one chilam (a hash-pipe, usually earthenware, in the shape of a bottleneck, that has to be held in two hands for smoking).

2. The part of such a pipe that contains the tobacco and charcoal balls.

Further reading

• Chillum on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Category:Chillums on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Henry Yule, A[rthur] C[oke] Burnell (1903) “chillum”, in William Crooke, editor, Hobson-Jobson […] , London: John Murray, […], page 195.