a chip off the old block
Also found in: Dictionary.
a chip off the old block
Someone whose character or personality resembles that of their parent. Mike's automotive repair skills really rival those of his father. He's a real chip off the old block!
chip off the old block
Fig. a person (usually a male) who behaves in the same way as his father or resembles his father. John looks like his father—a real chip off the old block. Bill Jones, Jr., is a chip off the old block. He's a banker just like his father.
chip off the old block
A person who closely resembles a parent, as in Like her mother, Karen has very little patience-a chip off the old block. This term, with its analogy to a chip of stone or wood that closely resembles the larger block it was cut from, dates from ancient times (Theocritus, Idyls, c. 270 b.c.). In English it was already a proverb by the 17th century, then often put as chip of the old block.
a chip off the old block
someone who resembles their parent, especially in character. informalA chip in this expression means something which forms a portion of, or is derived from, a larger or more important thing, and which retains the characteristic qualities of that superior thing. In 1781 Edmund Burke commented on Pitt the Younger's maiden speech in Parliament by saying he was: ‘Not merely a chip of the old “block”, but the old block itself’.
a ˌchip off the old ˈblock
(informal) a person who is very like one of his/her parents in appearance or character: Young Tom’s a chip off the old block, isn’t he? He looks exactly like his Dad!chip off the old block
A child whose appearance or character closely resembles that of one or the other parent.
chip off the old block, a
An individual who closely resembles a parent in abilities, behavior, or appearance, most often a son resembling his father. The analogy is to wood—that is, a chip consists of the same wood as the block from which it came—and dates back to ancient Greek times. Theocritus called it a chip-of-the-old-flint (Idyls, ca. 270 b.c.). The wood analogy appeared in several writings of the seventeenth century, although usually as a chip of the old block (Robert Sanderson, William Rowley, John Milton, and others), and John Ray’s 1670 proverb collection had it, “Kit after kind. A chip of the old block.”