I heard чехо́л when someone (A) was talking about a cell phone case.

Чехо́л, gen. чехла́, means [1] “some kind of cloth or other material made in the shape of an object that one wishes to protect from damage or dirt”. Vasmer [2] gives cognates in many other slavic languages and traces it back to ancient russian чехъ́лъ (the stress can’t be anywhere else, can it?), where it also means “case”, “cover”, but also “shawl” and some other kind of garment; the latter meaning also appears in contemporary slavic languages. Shansky [3] says it is probably derived from the same root as чехать, which would be a variant of чеса́ть, the idea being that the shawl would be cut or torn from fabric. I didn’t find any information on чехать, though, and чеса́ть means [4] to scratch, to comb, to remove insects from hair with a comb.

English shawl is of Persion origin [5]. This same word appears in French châle, Russian шаль and Portuguese xale.

Portuguese cachecol, although it sounds vaguely similar to the Russian word, has nothing to do with it. It actually comes from French cache-col, which uses an old version of cou and therefore means “neck hider”. Col itself derives from Latin collum, which is also the origin for Portuguese colo. The first meaning that Houaiss assigns to colo is, suprisingly enough, “neck”; the most common meaning nowadays, “lap”, is the seventh one.

In Portuguese, a чехо́л for a cell phone woulde be capa, which also means a “book cover” or a “raincoat”.

  • [1] http://gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?word=%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BB&all=x&lop=x&bts=x&zar=x&ag=x&ab=x&sin=x&lv=x&az=x&pe=x
  • [2] https://vasmer.lexicography.online/%D1%87/%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BB
  • [3] https://shansky.lexicography.online/%D1%87/%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BB
  • [4] http://gramota.ru/slovari/dic/?word=%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C&all=x
  • [5] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/shawl