Definition of: "chip off the old block" with explanation and origin

Definition of: chip off the old block with explanation and origin? Meaning of chip off the old block with examples in English idiom dictionary.

English	English

Definition of: "chip off the old block" with explanation and origin

chip off the old block

chip off the old block

Meaning

• the term is used to describe people who look like their parents.
• someone who is similar to one’s parents in behavior, character, or personality.
• someone who has a personality that is strikingly similar to their father or mother’s.

Example Sentences

1. Like his brother, he is a chip off the old block, very rude in behavior and stout in physique.
2. Jane’s daddy is a great cook, and she is a chip off the old block.
3. Stephen is a chip off the old block. He’s a good football player, just like his father.

Origin

“Chip off the old block” is an idiom typically used to convey that someone resembles a parent, either in physical resemblance, mannerisms, behavior, or ability.

Whilst there is some doubt around whether he was truly the author of all works attributed to him, it is generally accepted that Theocritus, a Greek poet born in Sicily, wrote the first iteration of this idiom in his tenth Idyll – The Reapers, written around 230BC. 

“Good master early-and-late-wi’-sickle, good Sire chip-o’-the-flint, good Milon, hath it never befallen thee to wish for one that is away?”

It is the phrase’s original format, referring to how a chip of a particular piece of wood or stone is the same as the larger part.  

The idiom reappeared in a new form in British writings beginning around 1627, notably in the anonymously authored Dick of Devonshire and Bishop Rober Sanderson’s Sermons, as “chip of the same block”. Around twenty years later this had evolved into “chip of the old block”, and was generally written in this form until 1897, when it appeared in the Virginia Law Register in the current phrasing:

“He fears to approach his son Taylor on the subject, well knowing that he is a ‘chip off the old block…'”

The version as we know it now was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1929, cementing this as the idiom we know it today.

The Origins of chip off the old block

English

Related Dictionary

• English Definition & Meaning Dictionary
• English Idioms and phrases Dictionary
• Dictionnaire Français
• Dictionnaire d'expressions idiomatiques et de phrases en français

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English Idioms and phrases

An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below). By another definition, an idiom is a speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements.[3] For example, an English speaker would understand the phrase "kick the bucket" to mean "to die" – and also to actually kick a bucket. Furthermore, they would understand when each meaning is being used in context.

To evoke the desired effect in the listener, idioms require a precise replication of the phrase: not even articles can be used interchangeably (e.g. "kick a bucket" only retains the literal meaning of the phrase but not the idiomatic meaning).

Idioms should not be confused with other figures of speech such as metaphors, which evoke an image by use of implicit comparisons (e.g., "the man of steel"); similes, which evoke an image by use of explicit comparisons (e.g., "faster than a speeding bullet"); or hyperbole, which exaggerates an image beyond truthfulness (e.g., "more powerful than a locomotive"). Idioms are also not to be confused with proverbs, which are simple sayings that express a truth based on common sense or practical experience.