Chopstick

For Lunar New Year (celebrated this coming Monday), let's look at a word English acquired from Chinese: chopstick. The English started trading with the Chinese in the 1600s, and to facilitate communication a pidgin, or mixture of the two languages, grew up. In Chinese pidgin, “chop” meant “quick” (this is also the origin of “chop-chop” meaning “hurry”.) “Chopsticks” were “quick sticks”, a partial translation of the Chinese name for them, kwaizi, literally “nimble children” or “nimble ones”.