Chelas

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A colloquial term often used to refer to friends or companions within certain cultural contexts
2. A slang word for beer, commonly used in casual settings to indicate a laid-back beverage choice
3. A familiar expression indicating camaraderie, sometimes associated with social gatherings and lighthearted interactions

Etymology: "Chelas" is the plural of "chela," and the slang sense for beer is a borrowing from Mexican Spanish, where "chela" came to mean a light beer. Its deeper root, though, is a word for a disciple. In Hindi, "celā" meant a student or disciple, especially one attached to a religious teacher, and that sense travelled through the Indian subcontinent's languages and into English-language writing about the region. The same word has a surprisingly different ancestry in Latin. The Greek "khēlḗ" meant a claw or pincer, and Latin borrowed it as "chele," used for the claw of a crab or scorpion. English took the Latin form for the pincer-like limbs of arthropods, so the Hindi word for a disciple and the Greek word for a claw are two separate lines that happen to share a spelling in English.