Chip

How to spell chip

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chip

What does chip mean?

1. nounA small piece broken or cut off a larger object, or the mark left where it broke.
2. nounA tiny piece of semiconductor material carrying an integrated electronic circuit.
3. nounA piece of fried potato; in Britain a hot fried strip, in North America a thin crisp slice.
4. nounA small disc used in place of money for betting at a casino table.
5. verbTo break or cut a small piece off a hard surface, often by accident.

Chip in a sentence

• noun

  A small chip in the mug let coffee seep onto the table.

• noun

  A faulty chip inside the phone caused the screen to freeze.

• noun

  He dipped one hot chip into the tomato sauce.

• noun

  The player slid a red chip across the felt to place a bet.

• verb

  Careless stacking can chip the edge of a porcelain plate.

• noun

  The carpenter brushed a chip of oak off the workbench.

Where does chip come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Chip comes from Old English, where the verb 'cippian' meant to cut or to pare, and the noun referred to the small fragment that flies off when wood is hewn. It belongs to a wider Germanic family connected with cutting and splitting, and is related to the verb 'chop'. For centuries the core sense stayed close to that literal beginning: a little piece struck off something larger, whether wood, stone, or pottery. Newer meanings grew out of that image, so the thin slice of fried potato, the small counter used in gambling, and the tiny slice of silicon in electronics all trace back to the same idea of a small detached piece. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling never strayed far from its Old English shape.

How the word is built

• chip (a small piece cut or broken off); native single-root word, no affixes