plural chips
1
a
: a small usually thin and flat piece (as of wood or stone) cut, struck, or flaked off
b
: a small piece of food: such as
(1)
: a small, thin, crisp, usually salty piece of food typically prepared by frying, baking, or drying
banana chips
especially
: potato chip see also corn chip
(2)
(3)
: a small often cone-shaped bit of food often used for baking
chocolate chips
c
: a small card displaying a paint color or a range of paint colors available for purchase
fabric swatches and paint chips
2
: something small, worthless, or trivial
3
a
: one of the counters used as a token for money in poker and other games
b
chips plural
: money
—used especially in the phrase in the chips
The beginning was always characterized by careless haste in the expectation of landing in the chips, …—
William Kittredge
William Kittredge
c
: something valuable that can be used for advantage in negotiation or trade
a bargaining chip
4
: a piece of dried dung
—usually used in combination
cow chip
5
: a flaw left after a chip has been broken off
6
b
: a small wafer of semiconductor material that forms the base for an integrated circuit
8
: microarray
DNA chips
chipped; chipping
1
a
: to cut or hew with an edged tool
b(1)
: to cut or break (a small piece) from something
(2)
: to cut or break a fragment from
chip a tooth
(3)
: to cut into chips
chip a tree stump
3
: to hit (a return in tennis) with backspin
Examples of chip in a Sentence
Noun
The cup has a chip in it.
wood chips were spread over the ground between the plants
Verb
I bit into something hard and chipped my tooth.
He fell and chipped a bone in his knee.
The paint had chipped off.
He chipped away the ice from the car's windshield.
The sculptor chipped away bits of stone.
The golfer chipped the ball onto the green.
She chipped the soccer ball over the goalie's head.
He chipped a pass to his teammate.
The golfer chipped onto the green.
Recent Examples on the WebBritney Nguyen, Quartz, 12 Apr. 2024
Donning his Sun Day Red apparel – released in collaboration with TaylorMade – at Augusta National, Woods rolled back the years at various points, starting with an audacious left-handed chip to escape the trees on Thursday.
—Jack Bantock, CNN, 12 Apr. 2024
Currently, Nvidia controls more than 90% of the AI chip market.
—Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 12 Apr. 2024
Last year, Huawei released its first phone with an in-house 5G chip made by China’s SMIC.
—Emma Roth, The Verge, 12 Apr. 2024
Monroe believes the diamond fell into a batch of either chocolate chip, sugar, or peanut butter cookies, according to KMBC.
—Abigail Adams, Peoplemag, 11 Apr. 2024
The company currently makes 3nm chips, the most cutting-edge at the moment, in Taiwan, so 2 nm chips would represent another step forward.
—Russ Wiles, The Arizona Republic, 9 Apr. 2024
With the predecessor chip, the company had touted how close to parity its performance was to Nvidia’s top chip of the time, H100, and claimed a superior ratio of price versus performance.
—IEEE Spectrum, 9 Apr. 2024
The book’s recipes are unrepentantly joyous: There’s a vegetable galette with a painterly rainbow of produce, white chocolate chip cookies with bursts of lemon and lime.
—Mayukh Sen, Washington Post, 1 Apr. 2024
Sunny Nagpaul, Fortune, 12 Apr. 2024
Whether to continue to chip away at We Energies' profit rate, currently set by the PSC at 9.8%.
—Karl Ebert, Journal Sentinel, 12 Apr. 2024
Advertisement As word spread of the beach’s reopening, cars and vans filed into the dirt lot, which now has fewer spots because of erosion that continues to chip away at the amount of sand and dirt road remaining.
—Laylan Connelly, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Apr. 2024
May investigations like this one keep chipping away.
—Longreads, 22 Mar. 2024
The state awarded the first retail licenses to people previously arrested for cannabis, an equity program meant to chip away at the lasting wrongs from the War on Drugs.
—Wesley Parnell, Rolling Stone, 22 Mar. 2024
All these numbers could chip away at your net sale profit.
—Kate Ashford Of Nerdwallet, Quartz, 18 Mar. 2024
Cons The gel only lasted a couple of days before chipping.
—Kate Watson, Peoplemag, 16 Mar. 2024
But facing a UConn team that dressed only eight players and played seven, USC chipped away.
—Thuc Nhi Nguyen, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024
Noun
Instead, Chinese telecom companies will turn to homegrown chips, which have improved in the nation.
—Britney Nguyen, Quartz, 12 Apr. 2024
Donning his Sun Day Red apparel – released in collaboration with TaylorMade – at Augusta National, Woods rolled back the years at various points, starting with an audacious left-handed chip to escape the trees on Thursday.
—Jack Bantock, CNN, 12 Apr. 2024
Currently, Nvidia controls more than 90% of the AI chip market.
—Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 12 Apr. 2024
Last year, Huawei released its first phone with an in-house 5G chip made by China’s SMIC.
—Emma Roth, The Verge, 12 Apr. 2024
Monroe believes the diamond fell into a batch of either chocolate chip, sugar, or peanut butter cookies, according to KMBC.
—Abigail Adams, Peoplemag, 11 Apr. 2024
The company currently makes 3nm chips, the most cutting-edge at the moment, in Taiwan, so 2 nm chips would represent another step forward.
—Russ Wiles, The Arizona Republic, 9 Apr. 2024
With the predecessor chip, the company had touted how close to parity its performance was to Nvidia’s top chip of the time, H100, and claimed a superior ratio of price versus performance.
—IEEE Spectrum, 9 Apr. 2024
The book’s recipes are unrepentantly joyous: There’s a vegetable galette with a painterly rainbow of produce, white chocolate chip cookies with bursts of lemon and lime.
—Mayukh Sen, Washington Post, 1 Apr. 2024
Verb
The latest attempt to chip away at the amount owed for education means President Joe Biden has now erased a grand total of $153 billion in debt, impacting 4.3 million people.
—Sunny Nagpaul, Fortune, 12 Apr. 2024
Whether to continue to chip away at We Energies' profit rate, currently set by the PSC at 9.8%.
—Karl Ebert, Journal Sentinel, 12 Apr. 2024
Advertisement As word spread of the beach’s reopening, cars and vans filed into the dirt lot, which now has fewer spots because of erosion that continues to chip away at the amount of sand and dirt road remaining.
—Laylan Connelly, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Apr. 2024
May investigations like this one keep chipping away.
—Longreads, 22 Mar. 2024
The state awarded the first retail licenses to people previously arrested for cannabis, an equity program meant to chip away at the lasting wrongs from the War on Drugs.
—Wesley Parnell, Rolling Stone, 22 Mar. 2024
All these numbers could chip away at your net sale profit.
—Kate Ashford Of Nerdwallet, Quartz, 18 Mar. 2024
Cons The gel only lasted a couple of days before chipping.
—Kate Watson, Peoplemag, 16 Mar. 2024
But facing a UConn team that dressed only eight players and played seven, USC chipped away.
—Thuc Nhi Nguyen, Los Angeles Times, 2 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'chip.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near chip
Cite this Entry
“Chip.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chip. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
chip
1 of 2 noun1
: a small thin flat piece (as of wood, stone, or glass) broken off : flake
2
3
a
: a counter used in poker
b
plural
: money sense 1c
in the chips
4
: a flaw left after a small piece has been broken off
a cup with a chip in it
5
: a very small slice of silicon containing electronic circuits (as for a computer)
chip
2 of 2 verb
chipped; chipping
1
: to cut or break a chip from something
chip a cup
2
: to break off in small pieces
Medical Definition
chip
noun
: microarray
When exposed to a sample of unknown DNA, the probes on the chip bind to their complementary strands, thereby reading the sequences in the sample.—Jeff Wheelwright, Discover
Jeff Wheelwright, DiscoverLove words? Need even more definitions?
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