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''chamois'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260215184259-00-⌔

chamois - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

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chamois (countable and uncountable, plural chamoises or chamois or chamoix)

  • A short - horned goat antelope native to mountainous terrain in southern Europe; Rupicapra rupicapra.
    • ✤ When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub – a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills.1
  • Ellipsis of chamois leather (“soft pliable leather originally made from the skin of chamois (nowadays the hides of deer, sheep, and other species of goat are alternatively used)”).
    • ✤ [H]e seldom donned his armour, substituted costly damask and silk for his war-worn shamoy doublet, and affected at his advanced time of life more gaiety of attire than his contemporaries remembered as distinguishing his early youth.2
  • The traditional colour of chamois leather.
    • ✤ chamois:
  • An absorbent cloth used for cleaning and polishing, formerly made of chamois leather.
    • ✤ I took them, breathed on them, polished them with a chamois and hung them on the chandelier.3
    • ✤ Mirrors can be cleaned with warm water and ammonia or vinegar and polished with a chamois.4
    • ✤ Once your paint has been restored, drying your car with a chamois is just about all you have to do to restore the luster.5
  • (cycling) A padded insert which protects the groin from the bicycle saddle.

Adjective

chamois (not comparable)

  • Chamois-colored.

Verb

chamois (third-person singular simple present chamoises, present participle chamoising, simple past and past participle chamoised)

  • (transitive) To clean with a chamois leather cloth.
    • ✤ Synonym: shammy

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French chamois, from Late Latin camox, from Gaulish camox (5th c. AD, Polemius Silvius), probably from an extinct Alpine language (Raetic, Ancient Ligurian), possibly Proto-Indo-European ﹡kem- (“without horns”). Compare also Old High German gamiza (“chamois”) (whence modern German Gämse).

Pronunciation

  • noun sense 1:
    • (Received Pronunciation, singular) IPA: /ˈʃæmwɑː/, (plural) IPA: /ˈʃæmwɑːz/
      • Audio (Southern England, singular): 🔊
      • Audio (Southern England, plural): 🔊
    • (US, singular) IPA: /ʃæmˈwɑ/, (plural) IPA: /ʃæmˈwɑ(z)/
      • sometimes (singular) IPA: /ˈʃæmi/, (plural) IPA: /ˈʃæmi(z)/
  • noun sense 2:
    • (Received Pronunciation, singular) IPA: /ˈʃæmi/, (plural) IPA: /ˈʃæmiz/
      • Audio (Southern England, singular): 🔊
      • Audio (Southern England, plural): 🔊
    • (US, singular) IPA: /ˈʃæmi/, (plural) IPA: /ˈʃæmiz/
      • sometimes (singular) IPA: /ʃæmˈwɑ/, (plural) IPA: /ʃæmˈwɑz/
    • Rhymes: -æmi
  • noun sense 3:
    • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈʃæmwɑː/, /ˈʃæmi/
  • noun sense 4, noun sense 5:
    • (US, singular) IPA: /ˈʃæmi/, (plural) IPA: /ˈʃæmiz/

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1831 October 31, Mary W[ollstonecraft] Shelley, chapter I, in Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (Standard Novels; IX), 3rd edition, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 22: ↩

  2. 1825 June 22, [Walter Scott], chapter XVI, in Tales of the Crusaders. […], volume I (The Betrothed), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., →OCLC, page 317: ↩

  3. 1926, Louise de Koven Bowen, Growing Up with a City, University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 39: ↩

  4. 1984, Cruising World, page 158: ↩

  5. 1989, Popular Mechanics, page 146: ↩

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