To have a chip on your shoulder
Meaning: To harbor a grudge or a defensive sense of grievance.
Language: English
Literally: To carry a chip of wood on your shoulder
Category: Daily Life
Origin: From a 19th-century American custom: a boy itching to fight balanced a wood chip on his shoulder, daring others to knock it off.
Equivalents in other languages
- French: avoir une dent contre quelqu'un — literally: to have a tooth against someone
More idioms — Daily Life
- Da kannst du Gift drauf nehmen — You can bet your life on it; it's absolutely certain.
- Den Nagel auf den Kopf treffen — To be exactly right.
- Ponerse las pilas — To get your act together and start working hard.
- Бить баклуши (Bit' baklushi) — To loaf about doing nothing.
- Pisar na bola — To mess up or let someone down.
- 바가지를 쓰다 (bagajireul sseuda) — To be overcharged; to get ripped off.
More English idioms
- To cost an arm and a leg — To be extremely expensive.
- To burn the midnight oil — To work late into the night.
- Once in a blue moon — Very rarely.
- To break the ice — To ease the initial tension in a social situation.
- To throw a spanner in the works — To sabotage or disrupt a plan.
- A skeleton in the closet — A shameful secret kept hidden.
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