Semiconductor technology

The twenty-second entry is il chip, and it is a word Italian took out of English with a pair of tweezers. In English a « chip » is first a small piece struck off something larger — a chip of wood, a chip of paint — and from that single image the language built a whole household. « Chips » are what a potato becomes in hot fat; a « chip » is the nick in the rim of a mug; a « chip » is the plastic disc pushed across a card table; and two set phrases carry the word away from objects altogether, « a chip on one’s shoulder » and « when the chips are down ». Italian imported none of that. It took the microelectronic sense, itself a metaphor built on the wood chip, and left the rest to words it already had: la scheggia for the splinter, la sbeccatura for the nick in the cup, le patatine for the fried potato, il gettone for the counter. So il chip is far narrower in Italian than « chip » has ever been here, and anyone translating the other way has four words to choose between.