Other forms: chalices
A chalice is a large ornamental cup, often used in ceremony. A silver chalice, raise the chalice, a poisoned chalice.
In Christian worship it holds the wine at communion, and it is usually the most valuable object a small church owns. A poisoned chalice is a gift or a job that will destroy whoever accepts it, a phrase that comes from Macbeth.
1nounchaliceA large ornamental cup, often used in ceremony.
“The king drank from a jewelled chalice at the coronation feast.”
chalice is a cup.
Latin calix means a cup, through Old French. Calyx, the cup of a flower, is a related Greek word.
Ancient Greek
κύλιξ
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kel-
Proto-Italic
*(s)kalik-
Latin
calix — cup
Old French
chalice
Middle English
chalis
English, today
chalice
Built from
From Middle English chalis, from Anglo-Norman -, from Old French chalice, collateral form of calice, borrowed from Latin calix (“cup”), of uncertain etymology. In view of xum skalçeta (“sacrifical vessel”), perhaps from a Proto-Italic (s)kalik-, from Proto-Indo-European (s)kel-. Pokorny considered a parallel formation in Sanskrit कलश (“(water-)jar, tub, pot, dish”), for kel-eḱ-, but De Vaan finds this unlikely. Alternatively, borrowed from Ancient Greek κύλιξ or an unattested variant thereof, maybe with contamination from κάλυξ (“shell, calyx”), but it is also possible that all were borrowed from related qfa-sub words. Possible a doublet of calyx and kelch. Compare Sumerian 𒃲(GAL).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA