Plural of cham; informal or dialectal term for friends, companions, or possibly chamois leather or chewing items.
The etymology depends on which 'cham' is pluralized—it could be from chamois (a type of leather), or from informal/dialectal terms for companions. Without standard dictionary validation, the origin is uncertain.
The plural 'chams' shows how hard it is to track informal and dialectal words—they spread through communities and speech but rarely appear in official records, making them linguistic ghosts that fascinate etymologists.
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