The fundamental and overtone vibrational absorption spectroscopy of the C-H unit in CHCl[subscript 3] is measured for transitions from the v = 0 energy level to v = 1 through v = 5 energy levels. The energies of the transitions exhibit a linearly-decreasing spacing between adjacent vibrational levels as the vibrational quantum number increases. These data are used as the basis for Birge-Sponer estimation of the dissociation energy, D[subscript 0], for the C-H bond in chloroform. The value obtained from the first 5 transitions is D[subscript 0] = 459 plus or minus 8 kJ mol[superscript -1] (95% confident interval), compared to a literature value of the bond dissociation energy for this bond of 401 kJ mol[superscript -1]. The error of 14.5% results from sampling only the most harmonic energy levels in the vibrational potential well. (Contains 1 figure.)