Some time later in 1855, the phrase "chip on his shoulder" appeared in the Weekly Oregonian, stating "Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off". Reportedly back then, shipwrights (aka carpenters with skill in ship construction and repair) were allowed to bring home leftover chips of wood from the job to be used for firewood or their own construction projects. It’s said they would carry the chips on their shoulder for inspection before taking them off the site.

if I only could get him to knock a chip off my shoulder, and so get round the law, I would give him one of the soundest thrashings he ever had.’”. Even if you’ve never heard the term idiom, you have most likely heard many idiomatic expressions. if I only could get him to knock a chip off my shoulder, and so get round the law, I would give him one of the soundest thrashings he ever had'." Oh! Even if you knew chip to mean a small piece of wood, if you were to take the expression at face value, you’d think we used it today as it was used back in the 18th or 19th century, to mean you had a small wood chip on your shoulder. In Canada, the custom is well described at St. Peter Claver's Indian Residential School for Ojibway boys in the town of Spanish, Ontario: By custom, the challenger, usually one of the intermediates, anxious to prove his worth or avenge some wrong, would deliberately seek out his foe with a wood chip or flat stone on his shoulder, placed there either by his own hand or by that of somebody else. A dictionary of slang and unconventional English, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chip_on_shoulder&oldid=978946025, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 17 September 2020, at 21:34. In more formal cases, a second might take the chip and present the chip to his man who would then place it on his own shoulder. To have a chip on one's shoulder refers to the act of holding a grudge or grievance that readily provokes disputation. Though I can't take the day off, I just think of the payoff. This song describes some of the pain Rod Wave feels while carrying this … You may hold a grudge against something or someone, say a person from your past who you believe treated you poorly or unfairly. Wikipedia shares more about the old custom.As is the case with most idioms, over time this expression came to have a different meaning and to be used figuratively. It’s possible the idiom chip on your shoulder originated in the 18th century in the British Royal Dockyards.

A Chip on Your Shoulder Meaning Definition: A bad attitude that tends to get someone upset easily, oftentimes stemming from a grudge held against someone. What you need is to get to work. The Origin of the Phrase. A similar notion is mentioned in the issue of the Onondaga Standard of Syracuse, New York on 8 December 1830: "'He waylay me', said I, 'the mean sneaking fellow—I am only afraid that he will sue me for damages. Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly's AI-powered writing assistant. The musical Legally Blonde has a song titled "Chip on My Shoulder". Here are just a few of the most common idioms used today: You’re in hot water. You carry the perceived grievance or grudge metaphorically on your shoulder and are thus quick to take offense and react with hostility. Most language historians, though, believe the phrase dates to the early 19th century and the custom of using chips in fighting, which might explain how the expression came to have the meaning we associate with it today. You’ve hit the nail on the head.If you took the first example literally, you’d think it was describing a person standing in a bathtub full of hot water, perhaps.



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