Other forms: chips, chipping, chipped
In Britain a chip is a thick finger of potato fried in hot fat — fish and chips out of paper, chips with everything, the smell of the chip shop on a Friday. In America the same thing is a fry, and their chips are what the British call crisps, thin and out of a bag.
That is one small word doing several jobs. A chip is also a little piece broken off something hard, and the dent it leaves behind: a chip in the mug, paint chips on the windowsill, wood chips on the garden path. It is the square of silicon inside every phone and bank card — chip and PIN, a computer chip. In a casino it is the round counter you push across the table. The verb follows the pieces: you chip a tooth, chip the paint, chip in with a fiver towards a leaving present, chip away at a long job. And the phrases are everywhere — a chip on your shoulder is a lasting grudge, a chip off the old block is a child exactly like the parent, when the chips are down means when things turn serious.
1nounchipA long thick piece of potato fried in hot fat.~6%
“He ordered cod and chips with mushy peas.”
synonyms: fries
2nouncrispsA thin slice of potato fried crisp and sold in a bag.~19%
“She opened a bag of chips and passed it round.”
synonyms: crisps
3nounbrokenA small piece broken off something hard, or the mark it leaves.~13%
“There was a chip in the rim of the cup.”
4nounsiliconA very small piece of silicon carrying an electronic circuit.~58%
“The card has a chip that the machine reads.”
5nouncounterA small round counter used for betting.~2%
“He pushed a stack of chips into the middle of the table.”
6verbbreakTo break a small piece off something hard.~2%
“She chipped a tooth on an olive stone.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: fries
Old English ċipp meant a chip, a small piece of wood, a shaving, and it came from Proto-Germanic *kippōną, to chip or chop. The first chips were the bits that flew off a carpenter's blade; the potato only turned up in Europe centuries later and borrowed the name.
Middle English
chippe
English, today
chip
From Middle English chippe. Noun from Middle English chip, chippe, from Old English ċipp (“chip; small piece of wood, shaving”), from Old English ċippian (“to cut; hew”) – attested in Old English forċippian (“to cut off”) –, from Proto-West Germanic kippōn (“to cut; carve; hack; chop”), from Proto-Germanic kippōną (“to chip, chop”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵeyb- (“to split; divide; germinate; sprout”). Related to Dutch kip, keep (“notch; nick; score”), Dutch kippen (“to hatch”), German Low German kippen (“to cut; clip; trim; shorten”), German kipfen (“to chop off the tip; snip”), gmq-osw kippa (“to chop”). Compare also chop. The formally similar Old English ċipp, ċypp, ċyp (“a beam; log; stock; post”), from Proto-Germanic kippaz (“log; beam”) (whence Old Saxon kip (“post”), Old High German kipfa, chipfa (“axle, stave”), Old Norse keppr (“cudgel, club”)) is a different, unrelated word either borrowed from Latin cippus (“stake; pale; post”) or borrowed from the same source language as the Latin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA