Etymologically
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chip

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /tʃɪp/[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English chip, chippe, inherited from Old English cipp (“small piece of wood, beam, log”),[2][3][4] which corresponds to Old Saxon kip (“post”), Old High German kipfa (“wagon pole, axle”) and Old Norse keppr (“stick, staff”).[3][2] These may all be early borrowings of Latin cippus (“stake, post, pillar”),[2][4] and Etymonline also mentions a possible PIE root Proto-Indo-European *keipo- (“sharp post”).[4] The verb, Middle English chippen, is probably from Old English forcippian (“to cut off”),[2][5][4] which matches East Frisian kippen (“to cut”) and Middle Low German kippen (“to hatch”).[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small, thin piece of wood, stone or the like cut or broken off: about 1330 in the OED,[7] before 1338 in Mannyng's Chronicle in Barnhart.[2] The verb, to break off in small pieces, is from 1425 in the Paston Letters.[2][4]

Semantic evolution

Hoad takes the basic sense to be “a piece hewn or cut”.[3] The early verb could also mean to pare the crust from bread,[6][7] and Middle English also had the noun for a paring of bread crust (about 1440).[7] A thin slice of fruit in cookery is from 1769;[7][4] slices of potato are in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and fish and chips were sold in London by 1860.[4] The American potato chip, the British crisp, is described by that name in a recipe book of 1858.[4] The counter used in games of chance is from 1840,[7][4] which gave to cash in one's chips, to die,[7] and probably to chip in, to contribute (1861, American English).[4] The tiny square of semiconductor in electronics is from 1962.[7][4] A chip off the old block was earlier chip of the same block and chip of the old block (mid-17th century), a person made of the same material as a parent;[8] a chip on one's shoulder is first American, and an 1830 Long Island newspaper explains that a boy spoiling for a fight dared another to knock a chip of wood off his shoulder.[8]

Timeline

  • c. 1330 – a small piece of wood or stone.[7]
  • 1425 – the verb, to break off in small pieces.[2]
  • 1769 – a thin slice of fruit.[7][4]
  • 1840 – a gaming counter.[7][4]
  • 1859 – potato chips, in Dickens.[4]
  • 1861 – to chip in, to contribute.[4]
  • 1962 – a silicon chip in electronics.[7][4]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A small piece broken or cut off something hard, such as wood, stone or glass.
  2. A mark or flaw left where such a piece has been broken off.
  3. A counter used in poker and other games to stand for money.
  4. (chiefly Brit.) A strip of potato fried in deep fat; (US) a thin, crisp slice of fried potato eaten as a snack.
  5. A tiny piece of semiconductor on which an integrated circuit is formed.

Verb

  1. To break small pieces from something, or to break off in this way.
  2. To shape or carve by cutting or chopping.
  3. To contribute money or help: to chip in.

Word family

  • chippable
  • chipper
  • chip in
  • chipped beef
  • chipping sparrow

Usage notes

Chip, to cheep or chirp, chiefly American from the late 18th century, is a separate imitative word.[6][5] In Yorkshire and the Midlands dialects a chip in porridge was something that does neither good nor harm.[9]

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)