chop-chop语源小探

检索网络，很容易发现关于表示「快点」意思的chop-chop的来源。

• 洋泾浜英语，源于粤语的「速速」。——Wiktionary

From Chinese Pidgin English, from Cantonese 速速 (cuk1 cuk1, “quick”).

• 源于粤语「急」——NPR 认为 chopstick 的 chop 来源于表示快的 chop

Several etymological dictionaries trace the origins of the word to a version of pidgin English used on ships (and later by Chinese servants and traders who regularly interacted with foreigners). The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first usage of "chop chop" in print to an 1834 article in the Canton (Ohio) Register. Two years later, it would also appear in The Penny Magazine, an illustrated English publication geared toward the working class. In an 1838 article, "Chinese English," the magazine defined "chop-chop" as "the sooner the better," but made no mention of the phase being rude or curt.

According to Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India, the noted Anglo-Indian dictionary published in 1886, the phrase originates from the Cantonese word kap, or 急 (which means "make haste"). In Mandarin, the word is jí, and in Malay it's chepat. This evolved into "chop-chop" and was quickly picked up by the Englishmen who traveled the Asian seas. By the 1900s, "chop-chop" had become an established part of military jargon, with the "chop-chop signal" included in the U.S. Army's 1916 Signal book and with the phrase commonly being used to mean "hurry, hurry." Former soldier Eugene G. Schulz described how Army officers would snap at soldiers in his memoir of World War II:

"[W]e hated the obnoxious sergeant from the kitchen who stood at the end of the steam table who constantly yelled 'All right, you guys, get the lead out of your rear and keep moving. Chop! Chop!' " Like many other words and phrases that trace their origins to Asia (see the "head honcho" or "the boondocks") the phrase "chop-chop" saw renewed usage during the wars of the second half of the 20th century. It was during the Korean War that chop-chop's second meaning as a slang word for food or eating began to be used again. (This definition also spawned the English word for chopsticks.)

• 源于「快快」—— Online Etymology Dictionay 认为表示快的 chop 来源于 chopstick

chop-chop (adv.) "quickly," 1834, Pidgin English, from Chinese k'wai-k'wai (see chopstick).

CHOP. A Chinese word signifying quality; first introduced by mariners in the Chinese trade, but which has now become common in all our seaports. [Bartlett, "Dictionary of Americanisms," 1848]

chopstick (n.)

also chop-stick, "small stick of wood or ivory used in pairs in eating in China, Korea, Japan," 1690s, sailors' partial translation of a Cantonese pronunciation of Chinese k'wai tse, variously given as "fast ones" or "nimble boys." The first element is from pidgin English chop, from Cantonese kap "urgent" (compare chop-chop); second element from Chinese tsze, an individualizing formative particle. Chopsticks, the two-fingered piano exercise, is first attested 1893, probably from the resemblance of the fingers to chopsticks.

Language Hat 有文章总结了这些。评论中 Endymion Wilkinson 提到

The first reference in a foreign language to eating with “two sticks” is by Tomé Pires (1550). The word chopsticks first appears in English in 1699 in William Dampier’s observations of the customs of Tonquin made during his 1688 visit there (Dampier, Voyages and descriptions [vol. 2, part 1, 84–85]).

检索 Voyages and descriptions，有以下内容

Chop sticks to eat with, in Tonquin and China —— 84页小标题

In China also these things are costantly used: they are called by the English seamen chopsticks. ——84-85

基于此，chopstick 来源于 chop 的可能性就不是很大了。

Jerry Friedman 提到了 A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794，其中有

Quoitzau —— Chop-sticks for eating with. Chop-chop —— To make haste.

至少18世纪末，chop-chop 已经表示「快点」的意思了。

从音韵上来看，「急」（音gap1）对应 chop 非常糟糕，仅有尾音相合，而「速速」（音cuk1 cuk1）韵母方面不相符合，也并不合理。

从时间上来看，比较合理的猜想是筷子先被称作 chopstick，棍状物 stick 是显而易见的，而筷子是由木竹劈就的，chop 正可对应「劈」这一行为。中国水手在得知 chopstick = 筷子后对语音进行分解，以 chop 对应「快」也是顺理成章。（hachimi尚且能被理解为宠物www）继而由「快快」衍生出 chop-chop 也就并不惊奇了。

那么，表示 Geoff Wade「品级」的 chop 从何而来？

Another early reference to chop-chop seen in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of 10 November 1840, reprinted from the Philadelphia Gazette (no date given):

"First Chop — We have often hear this word being made use of in this country — in short it is a specie of mercantile phrase, yet it applies to anything specially fine-but we could never get hold of its derivation. We presume now that it is of Chinese origin. A 'chop' in Chinese, on the authority of a gentleman recently from that quarter, means almost anything; sometimes a proclamation or a hand-bill, or a letter, or a law; and chop-chop means very fine or very strong, or first rate."

假如英语母语者已经认为「chop」来源于「急」（音gap1），那么与近音字「级」（音kap1）的混淆也并非不可能了。