you are chaffing me
Preserved but no longer current.
Making fun of me. A singular custom used to exist in Notts and Leicestershire some half a century ago. When a husband illtreated his wife, the villagers emptied a sack of chaff at his door, to intimate that "thrashing was done within." Chair, The. The office of chief magistrate in a corporate town; the office of a professor, etc as "The chair of poetry, in Oxford, is now vacant.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “you are chaffing me” mean?
Making fun of me. A singular custom used to exist in Notts and Leicestershire some half a century ago. When a husband illtreated his wife, the villagers emptied a sack of chaff at his door, to intimate that "thrashing was done within." Chair, The. The office of chief magistrate in a corporate town; the office of a professor, etc as "The chair of poetry, in Oxford, is now vacant.
Is “you are chaffing me” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.