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Etymology 1[edit]

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


chap (plural chaps)

  1. (dated outside UK and Australia) A man, a fellow.
    Who’s that chap over there?
  2. (UK, dialectal) A customer, a buyer.
    • Steele
      If you want to sell, here is your chap.
  3. (Southern US) A child.
Derived terms[edit]
  • Pennsylvania German: Tschaepp (guy)

Etymology 2[edit]

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 [...].
Derived terms[edit]


chap (plural chaps)

  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.
Derived terms[edit]

Etymology 3[edit]

From Northern English chafts (jaws).


chap (plural chaps)

  1. (archaic) The jaw (often in plural).
    • 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.

See also[edit]