Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun See
shruff . - To inspect for the purpose of detecting and throwing out what is bad: as, to
shroff dollars. - noun In India, a banker or money-changer.
- noun In China, Japan, etc., a native teller or silver-expert, employed by banks and mercantile establishments to inspect and count all dollars that reach the firm, and detect and throw out the bad or defaced ones.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun East Indies A banker, or changer of money.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun India A money-changer or
banker in South Asia. - noun Hong Kong A cashier at a car park.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Guests came face to face with two mandarins, a wedding bride, a woman with bound feet and her child, a schoolmaster, a shroff (money changer), three soldiers, and a Buddhist priest with a shaved head (fig. 9.7).
The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876 2005
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The ape cried, "I am the ape of Abu al-Sa'adat the Jew, the shroff."
Tehran Winter Naipaul, V.S. 1981
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Large sums are continually won and lost, it being a common thing to see gamblers, both men and women, after staking their last cash hand over watches, jewellery and other valuables to the shroff for valuation, and hazard all on a final throw to retrieve their losses.
Life and sport in China Second Edition Oliver George Ready
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This table is covered with a fine grass mat and surrounded on three sides with benches for the players, while on the fourth side sit the croupier and the banker or shroff.
Life and sport in China Second Edition Oliver George Ready
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Shanghai Bank was swindled seriously by a shroff who had done honest duty for a great number of years.
Across China on Foot Edwin John Dingle 1926
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Perhaps Jinendra felt compassionate toward a poor shroff (money-lender) who can not defend his suit successfully without that title-deed.
Guns of the Gods Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1921
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The shroff was very fearful, but as he was to be compradore now, to do the work of a
Civilization Tales of the Orient Ellen Newbold La Motte 1917
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He stood eyeing the young Chinese accountant, and the shroff looked him back fairly in the eye, and the same thought passed through both minds.
Civilization Tales of the Orient Ellen Newbold La Motte 1917
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So Withers and the shroff continued their desolate journey, day by day, across the plains, over such roads as are not, save in North
Civilization Tales of the Orient Ellen Newbold La Motte 1917
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He left his affairs in the hands of the shroff, the Chinese accountant, who could be trusted to manage them for a short time.
Civilization Tales of the Orient Ellen Newbold La Motte 1917
vanishedone commented on the word shroff
T.L.S.: 'Burton’s language, too, is eccentric and pretty unreadable, such that a not unlikely title might be “The Shroff who Futtered his Cadette with the Two Coyntes�? (I am making this up, but the words are Burton’s). Such words may be useful for players of Scrabble; modern readers deserve something better.'
O.E.D. to the rescue: a shroff is 'a banker or money-changer in the East; in the Far East, a native expert employed to detect bad coin'. No luck with futter as a verb, though; it's given only (under futtah) as an early spelling of whata (Maori), 'a food-store raised on posts'. Wiktionary says, however, that it's Burton's own coinage, from foutre. A cadette is a younger daughter or sister... Coynte has been discussed before. And that, clearly, is how you get biologically improbable filth into the pages of a respectable newspaper.
January 22, 2009