champ

English

Etymology 1

Clipping of champion／championship.

Pronunciation

• (US, UK, General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /t͡ʃæmp/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æmp

Noun

champ (plural champs)

1. (colloquial) Clipping of champion.
2. (colloquial, in the plural) Clipping of championship.

   The team failed to make it to the Champs.

3. (informal) Buddy, sport, mate. (as a term of address)

   Whatcha doing, champ?

Derived terms

Etymology 2

From Middle English champen, chammen (“to bite; gnash the teeth”), perhaps originally imitative.

Pronunciation

• (US, UK, General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /t͡ʃæmp/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æmp

Noun

champ (usually uncountable, plural champs)

1. (Ireland) A meal of mashed potatoes and scallions.

Verb

champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champing, simple past and past participle champed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To bite or chew, especially noisily or impatiently.
   • 1594–1597, Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, , London: Will Stansby , published 1611, →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     They began […] irefully to champ upon the bit.

   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite: Or, The Knight’s Tale. In Three Books.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC:

     Foamed and champed the golden bit.

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter XII, in Capricornia‎, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 200:

     He was mad, reeling about and gesticulating at the rushing train, and champing and gurgling like a lunatic.

   • 1951, Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1974 Panther Books Ltd publication), part V: “The Merchant Princes”, chapter 13, page 166, ¶ 18

     The man beside him placed a cigar between Mallow’s teeth and lit it. He champed on one of his own and said, “You must be overworked. Maybe you need a long rest.”

Derived terms

• champ up

Translations

Derived terms

• champ at the bit
• chomp
• thick as champ

Etymology 3

From champagne by shortening.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃæmp/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

champ (uncountable)

1. (informal) Champagne.
   • 1990 April 6, Ann Heller, “Prom Nights Often Offer Students Primer On Fine Dining”, in Dayton Daily News:

     "They're dressed up very elegantly and it's nice they have a glass of champ, even if it's non-alcoholic," Reif says.

   • 2009, The Lonely Island (featuring T-Pain), "I'm on a Boat", Incredibad:

     We're drinkin' Santana champ, 'cause it's so crisp

   • 2010, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Inheritance‎, Pan Books, published 2010, →ISBN:

     'Glass of champ?' she called, skipping into the kitchen.

Etymology 4

Borrowed from French champ (“field”). Doublet of campus and camp.

Alternative forms

• champe (obsolete?)

Noun

champ (plural champs)

1. (architecture, obsolete or rare) The field or ground on which carving appears in relief.
2. (heraldry, obsolete or rare) The field of a shield.
   • 1914, John Horne Stevenson, Heraldry in Scotland, page 30:

     If a man, he adds, have taken for his arms 'a low of gules in a champ of silver,'¹ […]
     ¹A flame (pile wavy) gules in a silver field. Thus the arms of the family of Bataille de Mandelot are, Argent three flames, per piles wavy gules, issuant from the base. Woodward, Heraldry, i. 158. Otherwise one might almost suppose that the word 'low' of the MS. was a misprint or a misunderstanding of the scribe for 'cow'; for the instance in one MS. of the original French is that of a man who took 'une vache de geules et trois estoiles par dessus.'

Etymology 5

Blend of church +‎ camp or back-formation from champing.

Verb

champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champing, simple past and past participle champed)

1. To camp overnight in a historic church as a novelty or part of a holiday.

Related terms

• glamp

References

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

French

French Wikipedia has an article on:

champ

Wikipedia ^fr

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French champ, from Old French champ, inherited from Latin campus (“field”). Doublet of camp and campus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʃɑ̃/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

• Homophones: champs, chant, chants
• Hyphenation: champ

Noun

champ m (plural champs)

1. field in its various senses, including:
   1. a wide open space
   2. an area of study
   3. (mathematics) a vector field, tensor field, or scalar field (but not a commutative ring with identity for which every nonzero element has a multiplicative inverse, cf. corps)
   4. (heraldry) the background of a shield's design

Derived terms

Related terms

• camp
• campagne
• campanile
• campus
• champagne
• champêtre

Descendants

• → English: champ

Further reading

• “champ”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Old French

Alternative forms

• camp (northern)
• chanp

Etymology

From Latin campus (“wild fild”).

Pronunciation

• (classical) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃamp/, (northern) /ka-/

Noun

champ oblique singular, m (oblique plural chans, nominative singular chans, nominative plural champ)

1. field
2. (by extension) battlefield

Descendants

(Some via the northern variant camp.)

• French: champ, camp
  • English: champ
• Norman: camp (Guernsey)
• Walloon: tchamp
• → Dutch: kamp
  • Afrikaans: kamp
  • Petjo: kamp
  • → Indonesian: kamp
  • → Sranan Tongo: kampu
    • → Caribbean Javanese: kampu

Scots

Etymology

Late Middle English, probably imitative.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): , , ,

Verb

champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champin, simple past champit, past participle champit)

1. to mash, crush, pound
2. to chew voraciously

Derived terms

• champer (“an implement for mashing or crushing etc., a pestle”)
• champers (“mashed potatoes”)

Noun

champ (plural champs)

1. (geography) a stretch of ground trodden into a miry state, a quagmire

Welsh

Noun

champ

1. Aspirate mutation of camp.

Mutation