Chipped

How to spell chipped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chipped

What does chipped mean?

1. verbBroke or knocked a small fragment off a hard surface or edge, usually causing minor damage.
2. adjectiveHaving a small piece broken or knocked off, leaving a flaw or rough edge.

Chipped in a sentence

• verb

  She chipped a tooth biting down on an olive stone.

• adjective

  The cafe served coffee in a chipped mug with a faded logo.

• verb

  The movers chipped the corner of the antique dresser.

• adjective

  Buyers complained about the chipped paint along the window frames.

Where does chipped come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'chip', which traces back to the Old English word 'cipp', meaning a small piece of wood or a beam, related to the act of cutting. Over time the noun came to mean any small fragment broken or cut from a larger whole, and from there a verb developed meaning to break off such fragments or to damage a surface by knocking pieces loose. The doubled 'p' in the written form follows a regular English spelling rule: a one-syllable word ending in a single vowel plus a single consonant doubles that consonant before adding '-ed', which is why 'chip' becomes 'chipped' rather than 'chiped'. The same pattern shapes relatives like 'stopped', 'tapped', and 'shipped'. The word's close cousin in the kitchen, the British 'chips' for fried potato strips, reflects the original idea of small pieces cut from something larger.

How the word is built

• chip (from Old English cipp: a small piece cut off)
• -ed (past tense); the final p is doubled before the suffix because chip ends in a single stressed vowel plus consonant