Meaning:
Be quick; hurry up.
Background:
This little reduplicated term has its origins in the South China Sea, as a
Pidgin English version of the Chinese term kuai-kuai. The earliest known
citation of chop-chop in print is from the English language newspaper that
was printed in Canton in the early 19th century - The Canton Register, 13th
May 1834:
We have also... `chop-chop hurry'.
A slightly fuller account was printed two years later, in a monthly journal
which was produced by and for American missionaries in Canton - The Chinese
Repository. In January 1836 it contained an article headed `Jargon Spoken in
Canton`, which included:
"Chop-chop - pidgin Cantonese phrase for `Hurry up!'"
The adoption of the chop-chop pronunciation was influenced by the
long-standing use of `chop' and `chop-up' by English seamen, with the meaning
`quick' or `hurried'.
The seafaring usage of `chop up' referred specifically to a sudden change in
the wind and the waves. This also gives us of the term `choppy' for turbulent
water and is a constituent part of the expression `chop and change`.
`Chop-up' was recorded by Sir William Monson in Naval Tracts, 1642:
"The Wind would chop up Westerly."
One of the many other meanings of the word chop is `to eat; to snap up' -
that is, `to take into the chops' (the jaws/cheeks/mouth). It would be a
reasonable conjecture that this was the source of the word `chop-sticks'.
Reasonable, but not correct. It is the 17th century sailor's slang use of
`chop' to mean `quick' which led to chop-sticks. The nimbleness of the
Chinese in their eating without the aid of forks caused the seamen to coin
the term `quick-sticks' or chop-sticks'. William Dampier recorded this in
1699 in A New Voyage Round the World:
"At their ordinary eating they [the Chinese] use two small round sticks
about the length and bigness of a Tobacco-pipe. They hold them both in the
right hand, one between the fore-finger and thumb; the other between the
middle-finger and fore-finger... they are called by the English seamen
Chopsticks."
This is in line with the original Chinese meaning. The Chinese name for
chop-sticks is Kuai Zi, which translates literally as `nimble boys' or
`nimble ones'.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Isn't this amazing? I got a kick every time hearing the phrase in a British
comedy such as Snatch, Doc Martin, Foyle's War, or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking
Barrels. And yet I've never suspected `chop chop' (sometimes emphasized, as in
`chop-the-f*cking-chop') have anything to do with Chinese let alone a great
example of Pidgin English.
Inspired by the origin of 'chop-chop' and 'chopstick,' one might be tempted to
invent choptrain, chopnews, and chopmeal, e.g., to mean express train, breaking
news, and fastfood, respectively.
