hange the common way of writing it
because the original Malay term is a single word, "amok," comes too late
in view of Dryden's line,

"And runs an Indian muck at all he meets."

Cheese, in the sense of a thing, or rather of "the very thing," must be
ranked as slang too, though very common. The slang dictionaries give
fanciful derivations from Anglo-Saxon roots, or suggest that it is a
perversion of "chose"; but it is a common Hindustani word for a thing,
and when an Englishman in India finds some article which exactly suits
his purpose and exclaims, "Ah! that's the cheese," no one needs to ask
the derivation. If it did not come to us directly from India, then it
came through the gipsies, for it is one of the many Hindustani words
which occur in their language. Another word that came from India
indirectly is Caste, but it is of Portuguese origin. The early
Portuguese writers applied it ("casta") to the hereditary division of
Hindu society, and the English adopted it. It has now become
indispensable. We have no other word that could take its place in the
lines,

Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

I must close with two familiar words which have been so long with us
that few who use them ever suspect that they came from the East--namely,
Punch and Toddy. The Rev. J. Ovington, who sailed to Bombay in 1689, in
the ship that carried the glad news of the coronation of William and
Mary, tells us that, in the East India Company's chief factory at Surat,
the common table was supplied with "plenty of generous Sherash (Shiraz)
wine and arak Punch," Arrack (properly "Urk"), sometimes abbreviated to
Rack, means any distilled spirit, or essence, but is commonly used to
distinguish country liquor from imported spirits. The Company's factors
drank it because European wines and beer were at that time very
expensive in India, and to reconcile it to their palates they made it
into a brew called Punch, from the Indian word "panch," meaning five,
because it contained five ingredients--viz. arrack, hot water, limes,
sugar and spice. This was the ordinary drink of poor Englishmen in India
for a longtime, and public "Punch-houses" existed in every settlement of
the East India Company.

Now, one of the principal substances from which country liquor is
distilled is palm juice, the native name for which, "tadee," has been
perverted into "toddy" (as in the case of "cot" above-mentioned), and
"toddy