Chips to Dried
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Tap any rung for its meaning.
Two stepping stones: the L (rung 1, for clips) and the F (rung 2, for flips) — each borrowed to keep a rung a real word, then given back before the end. There may be several par routes — the census above shows which ones climbers actually took.
A small broken piece or thin fried slice.
Chip comes from an Old English word meaning to cut or chop. It is closely related to 'chop.' The sense of a thin fried potato slice developed later in British English.
Full entry on Wiktionary ↗Past tense of dry: to remove moisture from something.
The word dry comes from Old English 'dryge,' meaning free from moisture. It is related to Dutch 'droog' and German 'trocken.' The spelling shift from 'y' to 'i' in inflections like dried follows a common English pattern.
Full entry on Wiktionary ↗Definitions give each word’s most common meaning — the full entries live at Wiktionary.