Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Anglo-Ind.) a cigar from the Trichinopoly district of the Madras Presidency (in present-day Tamil Nadu).

c.1830		Oriental Sporting Mag. (1873) 15 July 329: ‘Have a cigar? It’s a Portage – not a Trichy.’‘Don’t you refuse Trichys. If you get one with a good straw in it – one that will draw, it is as good a cheroot as there is out,’ said the passenger Monty called Bob.
1878		Farmer’s Mag. 268: The chances generally are that at least half of every bundle of ‘Lunkas,’ or ‘Trichies,’ will have to be thrown away, owing to the impossibility of making them ‘draw’.
1880		Eve. News (Sydney) 8 May 6/2: She could not stand a man who did nothing but smoke all day; she would be jealous of his Manillas or his Trichie, or whatever particular weed he affected.
1883		Frank Leslie’s Popular Mthly 747/2: Cheroots and cigars of every price brand or make are at hand and available, from the venerable Trichy to the well-known Lunka, and an American need never miss the taste of his own native Virginny.
1884		Graphic (London) XXX 70/3: Now and then one comes upon a choice Trichy or Lunkah which has been carefully made and carefully kept.
1889		Sydney Mail 9 Feb. 279/3: ‘Tommy Atkins is very much changed from what he used to be,’ said the Major [...] as he lit a fresh “Trichy”’.
1891		Kipling Departmental Ditties 123: [Gloss.] ‘Trichi,’ a contraction of Trichinopoly, a place on the S.E. Coast of Hindustan, noted for its cigars — hence ‘Trichi’ denotes a Trinchinopoly cigar.
1893		J.D. Gordon Work and Play in India and Kashmir 189: A whisky peg and a Trichy being found to his liking, he settled himself in the best chair and spun the following yarn.
1893		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 22 July 1/4: [T]he performance concludes by my producing a 100-ton Trichy, (one of the longest and rankest procurable in India with reed mouthpiece and straw).
1895		Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 11 Jan. 3/4: The cigar with which Lord Wenlock contrasted the modern is the old Trichy cheroot, known to all Europeans who have lived in India.
1897		E.W. Hopkins ‘Ancient Monuments of the Deccan’ in Nation 1 Apr. 240/2: The Sa’b now lights a trichy, to measure by its ash how long it will take somebody to do something.
1900		Newcastle Morn. Herald (NSW) 16 Apr. 5/1: ‘Was it a Trichy (Trichinopoli cigar, three a penny) or a Pondicherry (two a penny) you took then, sir?’.
1911		Mrs. M.A. Handley Roughing It in Southern India I 156: men who understood the work came from Trichinopoly to do the curing and rolling into cheroots (here we did not call them cigars) after the manner of ‘Trichies,’ a sort which it takes a well-seasoned smoker to appreciate, as they are very strong. Trichies have a special shape of their own, being large and tapering, and cut off square at each end, and have a reed through them, which is supposed to make them ‘draw’ better.

2. (Anglo-Ind.) the Trichinopoly district of the Madras Presidency (in present-day Tamil Nadu).

1878

Newcastle Morn. Herald (NSW) 17 Jan. 2/4: As our readers will see, the bad example of the Trichy address has told upon us, for we are horrified to find we have penned a sentence forty-eight lines long.