As a noun, a chip can be a small broken piece of something, a thin slice of fried food, or a tiny electronic part that stores and processes information. As a verb, “to chip” means to break off a small piece from something.
“Chip” comes from Old English “cipp” or “ceap,” meaning a small piece of wood or splinter. The meaning broadened to small fragments of many materials, and later to thin slices of food and tiny electronics.
The computer chip and the potato chip share the same basic idea: a small, thin piece cut from something bigger. Microchips are just insanely miniaturized chunks of patterned material that can think. Language didn’t invent a new concept for them—it just shrank an old one down to silicon size.
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