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chop

nounverbverbnounnounnounverbnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//t͡ʃɒp//
  • United States//t͡ʃɑp//

A cut of meat, often containing a section of a rib.

noun

  1. 1

    A cut of meat, often containing a section of a rib.

    I only like lamb chops with mint jelly.

    Of the two fried chops served him for breakfast he ate one and gave Edmund the other, and put a buttered sandwich of bread in his pocket against the accidents of travel.

    I was standing at the meat counter, waiting for some rib lamb chops to be cut.

  2. 2

    A blow with an axe, cleaver, or similar implement.

    It should take just one good chop to fell the sapling.

  3. 3

    A blow delivered with the hand rigid and outstretched.

    A karate chop.

  4. 4

    Ocean waves, generally caused by wind, distinguished from swell by being smaller and not lasting as long.

  5. 5

    A hand where two or more players have an equal-valued hand, resulting in the chips being shared equally between them.

    With both players having an ace-high straight, the pot was a chop.

  6. 6

    informalTermination, especially from employment; the sack.

  7. 7

    A woodchopping competition.

    E, C. McsEnulty, who won the chop at the show on Thursday, cut through a foot lying block in 34 seconds[.]

  8. 8

    datedA crack or cleft; a chap.

  9. 9

    Aircraft turbulence.

  10. 10

    slangCocaine.

  11. 11

    slangA knife, especially one used as a weapon.

    It's peak when the mandem spotty I gonna need more than a dot-dot Capisce, got a problem for swinging this chop?

Etymology

From Middle English choppen, chappen (“to chop”), of uncertain origin, possibly onomatopoeic (cf. Swedish tjoff), or a variant of chap (“to become cracked”). Cognate with Scots chap (“to chop”). Compare also Saterland Frisian kappe, kapje (“to hack; chop; lop off”), Dutch kappen (“to chop, cut, hew”), German Low German kappen (“to cut off; clip”), German kappen (“to cut; clip”), German dialectal chapfen, kchapfen (“to chop into small pieces”), Albanian copë (“piece, chunk”), Old English *ċippian (in forċippian (“to cut off”)). Perhaps related to chip. Compare French couper (“to chop”), Ancient Greek κόπτω (kóptō, “to strike, cut”), Swedish and Norwegian kapa, kappa, kabba (“to chop/cut (off)”).

verb

  1. 1

    To cut into pieces with short, vigorous cutting motions.

    chop wood; chop an onion

  2. 2

    To sever with an axe or similar implement.

    Chop off his head.

  3. 3

    figurativeTo separate or divide.

    We should chop off some of that department's budget.

  4. 4

    to give a downward cutting blow or movement, typically with the side of the hand.

  5. 5

    To hit the ball downward so that it takes a high bounce.

  6. 6

    To divide the pot (or tournament prize) between two or more players.

  7. 7

    To make a quick, heavy stroke or a series of strokes, with or as with an ax.

  8. 8

    To do something suddenly with an unexpected motion; to catch or attempt to seize.

    Out of a Greediness to get both, he Chops at the Shadow, and Loses the Substance.

  9. 9

    To interrupt; with in or out.

    This fellow […]interrupted the sermon, even suddenly chopping in.

  10. 10

    To stab.

    A man had chopped a Sanitary Department coolie to death after an argument about money, Supreme Court was told today.

  11. 11

    To remove the final character from (a text string).

  12. 12

    slangTo manipulate or separate out a line of cocaine.

    He chopped out a fat line.

  13. 13

    slangTo have sex with.

    One of my bredrins is saying, what's the oldest ting he can chop?

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo exchange, to barter; to swap.

    this is not to put down Prelaty, this is but to chop an Episcopacy; this is but to translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into another, this is but an old canonicall sleight of commuting our penance.

  2. 2

    To chap or crack.

  3. 3

    To vary or shift suddenly.

    The wind chops about.

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo twist words.

    Let not the counsel at the bar chop with the judge.

  5. 5

    To converse, discuss, or speak with another.

Etymology

Uncertain, perhaps a variant of chap (“cheap”). Compare Middle English copen (“to buy”), Dutch kopen (“to buy”).

noun

  1. 1

    A turn of fortune; change; a vicissitude.

noun

  1. 1

    A jaw of an animal.

  2. 2

    A movable jaw or cheek, as of a vice.

  3. 3

    The land at each side of the mouth of a river, harbour, or channel.

    East Chop

    West Chop

Etymology

From Middle English choppe (“jaw, jawbone”), related to Middle English cheppe (“one side of the jaw, chap”). Perhaps ultimately related to Etymology 1 above.

noun

  1. 1

    A stamp or seal; a mark, imprint or impression on a document (or other object or material) made by stamping or sealing a design with ink or wax, respectively, or by other methods.

  2. 2

    The device used for stamping or sealing, which also contains the design to be imprinted.

  3. 3

    A mark indicating nature, quality, or brand.

    silk of the first chop

  4. 4

    A licence or passport that has been sealed.

  5. 5

    A complete shipment.

    a chop of tea

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindi छाप (chāp, “stamp”). Closely related to the similarly descended Malay word cap, which likely reinforced the English usage within the Malay world.

verb

  1. 1

    To stamp or seal (a document); to mark, impress or otherwise place a design or symbol on paper or other material, usually, but not necessarily, to indicate authenticity.

  2. 2

    To seal a licence or passport.

noun

  1. 1

    An IRC channel operator.

    IRC supports mechanisms for the enforcement of acceptable behaviour on IRC. Channel operators — "chanops" or "chops" — have access to the /kick command, which throws a specified user out of the given channel.

Etymology

Shortening.

verb

  1. 1

    informalTo fly a helicopter or be flown in a helicopter.

    We chopped back to the base.

Etymology

Shortening of chopper.

Forms

plural
chops
past tense
chopped
past participle
chopped
present participle
chopping
third person singular
chops
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).