chap

• IPA^(key): /tʃæp/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æp

Shortened from chapman (“dealer, customer”) in 16th century English.

chap (plural chaps)

1. (dated outside Britain and Australia) A man, a fellow.
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     A chap named Eleazir Kendrick and I had chummed in together the summer afore and built a fish-weir and shanty at Setuckit Point, down Orham way. For a spell we done pretty well.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess‎:

     ‘No. I only opened the door a foot and put my head in. The street lamps shine into that room. I could see him. He was all right. Sleeping like a great grampus. Poor, poor chap.’

   Who’s that chap over there?

2. (Britain, dialectal) A customer, a buyer.
   • Steele

     If you want to sell, here is your chap.

3. (Southern US) A child.

• See also Thesaurus:man

• chapess
• chappie
• chappo

• Pennsylvania German: Tschaepp (“guy”)

From Middle English chappen, from Old English *ċeappian, from Proto-Germanic *kapp- (“to strike, cut”). Cognate with Dutch kappen (“to cut, chop, hack”). Related to chip.

chap (third-person singular simple present chaps, present participle chapping, simple past and past participle chapped)

1. (intransitive) Of the skin, to split or flake due to cold weather or dryness.
2. (transitive) To cause to open in slits or chinks; to split; to cause the skin of to crack or become rough.
   • Blackmore

     Then would unbalanced heat licentious reign, / Crack the dry hill, and chap the russet plain.

   • Lyly

     Nor winter's blast chap her fair face.

3. (Scotland, Northern England) To strike, knock.
   • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, page 35:

     The door was shut into my class. I had to chap it and then Miss Rankine came and opened it and gived me an angry look […]

• chapped
• chapstick

chap (plural chaps)

1. A cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth, or in the skin.
2. (obsolete) A division; a breach, as in a party.
   • T. Fuller

     Many clefts and chaps in our council board.

3. (Scotland) A blow; a rap.

• chappy

From Northern English chafts (“jaws”). Compare also Middle English cheppe (“one side of the jaw, chap”).

chap (plural chaps)

1. (archaic, often in the plural) The jaw.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare

     This wide-chapp'd rascal—would thou might'st lie drowning / The washing of ten tides!

   • Cowley

     His chaps were all besmeared with crimson blood.

   • Shakespeare

     He unseamed him from the nave to the chaps.

2. One of the jaws or cheeks of a vice, etc.

• chop

Shortening

chap (plural chaps)

1. (Internet slang) Abbreviation of chapter. (division of a text)

• chaps

• CHPA, PHAC

• Audio

  (file)

chap m (plural chappen, diminutive chappie n)

1. Alternative spelling of sjap.

• IPA^(key): /xap/

chap

1. second-person singular imperative of chapać

• IPA^(key): /tʃap/

From Old English *ċeappian, *ċieppan, from Proto-Germanic *kapp-, *kap- (“to chop; cut; split”), like also English chop. Akin to Saterland Frisian kappe, kapje (“to hack; chop; lop off”), Dutch kappen (“to chop, cut, hew”), Middle Low German koppen (“to cut off, lop, poll”), German Low German kappen (“to cut off; clip”), German kappen (“to cut; clip”), German dialectal chapfen (“to chop into small pieces”), Danish kappe (“to cut, lop off, poll”), Swedish kapa (“to cut”), Albanian copë (“piece, chunk”), Old English *ċippian (attested in forċippian (“to cut off”)).

chap

1. To knock or strike.