🧔 Sideburns 🎸 Skill or ability 👄 Mouth or jaws

chops

1 3.7

Hair grown on the sides of the face in front of the ears

noun
/tʃɑps/

: patillas

After months of growing, his chops were thick and well-defined.
lamb chops
pork chops

Examples

I WANTED THEM PORK CHOPS.

Brown Sugar (2002)
AND SOME PORK CHOPS.

Brown Sugar (2002)
- LAMB CHOPS.

Cheetah (1989)
He styled his chops to match his unique look for the party.
The actor was famous for his distinctive chops that set him apart from others.

Synonyms

sideburn

vschops

32 4.3

A strip of hair on each side of the face in front of the ear

is an alternate name for that same facial hair

facial hair

vschops

26 1.0

Hair that grows on the face, like a beard or mustache

is only hair on the sides in front of the ears, not all face hair

burnside

vschops

Archaic

2 9.9

A strip of hair along the face beside the ears with the chin shaved

is an alternate name for that same strip of facial hair

mutton chops

vschops

1 5.3

Thick sideburns that grow down the cheeks and reach the jaw

is the shorter or thinner form rather than the long style

side-whiskers

vschops

1 7.9

A strip of hair on each side of a man's face in front of the ears

is a general term for side facial hair without insisting the rest is shaved

mutton chop

vschops

8.2

Facial hair where long sideburns run down the face in front of the ears

is any side facial hair even when other facial hair remains

muttonchop mustache

vschops

7.1

Facial hair that grows thick along the jaw and down the cheeks

is only side hair near the ears and not an extension from upper lip hair

Idioms

to bust someone's chops

Informal

1 9.0

To tease or nag someone, often in a playful way

to break someone's chops

Archaic

8.7

To tease or nag someone in a way that annoys them

Compounds

mutton chops

1 5.3

Thick sideburns that grow down the cheeks and reach the jaw

mutton chops

1 3.9

Pieces of sheep meat, usually from the ribs, cooked and served as a meal

cheeky chops

Baby Talk

8.9

A person, often a child, who speaks or acts in a bold, playful, slightly rude way

How Long

mutton chops

1 5.3

chops

1 3.7

stubble

15 4.2

Surface Forms

chop singular

chops plural

Morphology

chops = mutton-chops + chop (opaque) = chop + s

Usually a clipped form from 'mutton-chops' (a phrase referring to facial hair); the connection to 'chop' (meat or cut) is not a productive or transparent derivation for learners.

Etymology

Chops for sideburns comes from an old word for the 'jaw' or 'cheek' and from the name mutton-chops for a cut of meat, because the face hair looks like that meat on the side of the face. So chops means the hair grown at the sides of the face.