Chop

How to spell chop

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chop

What does chop mean?

1. verbTo cut something into pieces using quick, heavy strokes of a knife, axe, or similar tool.
2. nounA small cut of meat, usually attached to a rib or bone, such as from lamb or pork.

Chop in a sentence

• verb

  Please chop the onions finely before adding them to the pan.

• noun

  She ordered a grilled lamb chop with mint sauce.

• verb

  He went outside to chop wood for the fire.

• noun

  The butcher trimmed the fat from each pork chop.

Where does chop come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Chop entered English in the 1300s as the Middle English verb choppen, a variant of chappen, which meant to cut, split, or crack with a blow. It is a native word of Germanic stock, related to forms in Dutch and Low German that carried the same idea of striking something open, and the same root sits behind the cracked, split skin we still call chapped. Over time the word settled into two related ideas: the action of cutting with quick downward strokes, and the resulting piece, especially a small cut of meat such as a lamb or pork chop. The spelling has stayed remarkably simple and stable, with the short open vowel and the hard final p surviving largely unchanged for centuries. Because the word is so short and phonetically regular, the spelling almost never causes trouble.

How the word is built

• chop (single root, no prefix or suffix)