Other forms: microchips
A microchip is a tiny implant carrying an animal's identity. Microchip the dog, scan the microchip, an implanted microchip.
It carries a number and nothing else — no tracking, no position — and the number is looked up in a database, which is why keeping your details there current is the part that matters. It is compulsory for dogs in Britain and increasingly for cats.
1nounmicrochipA tiny implant carrying an animal's identity.
“The vet scanned the stray dog and found a microchip with its owner's details.”
microchip is an implant.
Middle English
chippe
English
chip
English, today
microchip
From micro- + chip. chip comes 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