Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To cause (the skin) to roughen, redden, or crack, especially as a result of cold or exposure: The headwind chapped the cyclist's lips.
- v. To split or become rough and sore: skin that chaps easily in winter.
- n. A sore roughening or splitting of the skin, caused especially by cold or exposure.
- n. Informal A man or boy; a fellow.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To cause to cleave, split, crack, or break in clefts: used of the effect of extreme cold followed by heat on exposed parts of the body, as the hands and lips, and sometimes of similar effects produced in any way on the surface of the earth, wood, etc. Also chop.
- To strike, especially with a hammer or the like; beat.
- To crack; open in slits, clefts, or fissures: as, the earth chaps; the hands chap. Also chop.
- To knock, as at a door; strike, as a clock.
- n. A fissure, cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth or in the hands or feet: also used figuratively. Also chop.
- n. A stroke of any kind; a blow; a knock; especially, a tap or rap, as on a door, to draw attention. Also chaup.
- n. The upper or lower part of the mouth; the jaw: commonly in the plural.
- n. A jaw of a vise or clamp.
- n. plural The mouth or entrance of a channel: as, the chops of the English channel. Sometimes applied to the capes at the mouth of a bay or harbor: as, the East Chop and West Chop of Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard.
- n. A buyer; a chapman.
- n. A fellow; a man or a boy: used familiarly, like fellow, and usually with a qualifying adjective, old, young, little, poor, etc., and loosely, much as the word fellow is.
- To buy or sell; trade: a variant of chop and cheap
- To choose; choose definitely; select and claim: as, I chap this.
- To fix definitely; accept and agree to as binding; hold to (a proposal, or the terms of a bargain): as, I chaps that; I chap (or chaps) you.
- An abbreviation of chapter.
- n. The act of picking and choosing; selection: as, ‘chap and choice.’ See chap5, transitive verb
- n. An abbreviation of chaplain.
Wiktionary
- n. a customer, a buyer
- n. a man or fellow
- v. Of the skin, to split or flake due to cold weather or dryness.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To cause to open in slits or chinks; to split; to cause the skin of to crack or become rough.
- v. To strike; to beat.
- v. To crack or open in slits.
- v. To strike; to knock; to rap.
- n. A cleft, crack, or chink, as in the surface of the earth, or in the skin.
- n. A division; a breach, as in a party.
- n. A blow; a rap.
- n. One of the jaws or the fleshy covering of a jaw; -- commonly in the plural, and used of animals, and colloquially of human beings.
- n. One of the jaws or cheeks of a vise, etc.
- n. A buyer; a chapman.
- n. A man or boy; a youth; a fellow.
- v. To bargain; to buy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a boy or man
- n. (usually in the plural) leather leggings without a seat; joined by a belt; often have flared outer flaps; worn over trousers by cowboys to protect their legs
- n. a long narrow depression in a surface
- v. crack due to dehydration
- n. a crack in a lip caused usually by cold
Etymologies
- Middle English chappen.Short for chapman.
Examples
“I wouldn't know if this chap is a waste of space or not N but I do agree with saving the rainforests.”
“I don ` t know who the chap is doing the review of MP ` s expenses, or what his instructions have been, but I don ` t like it.”
McNulty Escapes With ‘A Talking To’ Shock! « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG
“For example, one chap is scrabbling around trying to make sense of station adjustments.”
“And then you hear the chap is no longer with us, as if the foreground were a busy harbor and out at sea a ship was foundering, comically unattended as it sunk and perished forever.”
If I Could Have a Conversation about It: Decline and Fall « Unknowing
“After listening to a video in which a narrow, scholarly conclusion was advocated as a universal key to Scripture, I suggested to the Colombians watching it with me that the learned chap from the Infallible USA was actually not saying anything very meaningful or useful.”
“So the analogy of "taking $10 from the poor chap" is too much, because it carries the moral loading of losing something that was their rightful property, while it's not at all clear that we should or do carry a moral right to dump however much CO2 (or whatever) into the atmosphere as suits us with no thought to the potential consequences for future generations.”
What Kind of Global Warming Skeptic?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“To paraphrase Fred G. Sanford: This severe chap is as funny as a train wreck.”
“However, I am told by my daughters that this David Tennant chap is rather good, and as one of them is studying Hamlet at school I conquered my fear of hubris about the future and my aversion to Barty Crouch, Jr, and booked the darn things.”
“I'm assuming as it's called 'Wireless' the chap is writing for a radio show?”
“Rumours abound that this chap is being lined up to be the new Dr. Who.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chap’.
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 280 more...
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gangster
random gangster lingo.
( randomness )right chea, swagga, chinga, slams, blitzy, earf, manor, code name, rekkid, weight, feather, kong and 298 more...
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"Queen's" English
Collection of words from Old Blighty
sorted, sketchy, mate, oi, innit, ol' chum, brilliant, wicked, arse, bloody, bollocks, wanker and 12 more...
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Chap stickies
Words associated with Chappism.
chap, brideshead revisited, jeeves, woosterian, rough shag, spigot, anarcho-dandyism, chumrade, chapette, wing-backed armchair, snood, boogie-woogie and 26 more...

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