Chip on the Shoulder

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Frank from Richardson, Texas.

Hello, Frank. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Frank. What’s up?

Well, my son and I were on the way to school a couple days ago, and we heard this funny story on the radio about a Dallas Cowboys football player who had recently tweeted out a picture of a tattoo that had a number, 189, which was his draft number, and a potato chip. And with that picture, he had tweeted the statement, been playing with a chip on my shoulder ever since high school. And the guys on the radio and my son and I got a pretty good laugh about that story, thinking, well, surely it’s not a potato chip that that term refers to. But then it left us with the question, what kind of chip is it that is referred to in that phrase?

So we thought that’s a perfect question for Grant and Martha.

It is.

What kind of chip is on your shoulder if you have a chip on your shoulder, Martha?

Well, in the olden days, it was just a chip of wood or maybe even a little stone. So like leftovers from a sawmill or chopping wood in the back or something like that?

Yeah, something like that.

Okay.

Yeah.

And if you had a chip on your shoulder, you would literally do this, you know, when little boys were going to fight or something. One would put a chip on his shoulder and dare the other one to knock it off. It’s like the line in the sand with your toe, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or challenging somebody to a duel. Smacking in the face with the gloves.

Yeah, like I dare you to do this. And if you knock this chip off my shoulder, then we’re going to fight.

Right.

And you come in close enough to do it, they can slug you pretty good.

Yeah.

But it was basically a dare. Like you knock this chip off my shoulder and you’re going to get punched.

So, Frank, it’s weird because potato chip is the ubiquitous chip for us, except for maybe the computer chip, right?

That’s right.

We cycled through all the chips that we knew, like hooker chip or chocolate chip chip. And we knew those weren’t in the right hands. We figured it had to do with something like wood, but we couldn’t figure out how the chip got on the shoulder in the first place. So this makes sense that somebody put it there as a dare or a challenge to somebody else.

Right. Yeah.

And so if you have a chip on your shoulder as you’re going through life, you’re sort of churlish or daring people to cross you. You have a grudge or something. What do people do? Boys in the playground, they’ll just say, like, bring it and put up their dukes. How does that go?

I don’t even know.

I don’t know.

What does your kids say?

I don’t know.

They probably just text something to each other at the end of it. Don’t send me that emoji. How dare you?

Great.

Well, thank you, guys. I knew you’d have the answer, and you delivered.

Awesome.

Thanks for calling, Frank.

Thank you so much for calling. I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

So the descriptions of boys doing the challenge with the chip on the shoulder date back to, like, the 1830s or earlier.

Yeah, yeah.

But the figurative expression about he’s walking around with a chip on his shoulder isn’t until later, like the 1880s, right?

Something like that.

But it’s funny that the expression is disconnected from its roots so that we have to, it’s a real puzzle. That’s why we do the show, but to reconnect the present language with the past history and go, oh, there was a time when woodcutting was so common that you could say chip and everyone understood you meant wood chip.

Well, maybe you know, maybe there’s a thing that’s now said to challenge another boy at a fight on a playground. The young women never did it at my school. They would just go at it and you could never see it start.

Let us know if you know that language, 877-929-9673, or tell us the story in email to words@waywordradio.org.