Plural of charpoy; lightweight South Asian beds with rope or fabric webbing stretched across a wooden frame.
From Hindi/Urdu charpāī (from Sanskrit chatur 'four' + paada 'foot') + English plural -s. The term entered English during colonial India and remains widely used. It's phonetically similar across South Asian languages with minor spelling variations.
British colonizers were fascinated by charpoys and adopted them for their barracks in India—they realized that a simple rope bed was actually superior to heavy wooden bedframes in tropical climates, which is why charpoys became standard military furniture across the British Empire!
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