to break someone's chops
- idiom
- Archaic
:
molestar a alguien
- She loves to break my chops about my coffee choices every morning.
Examples
-
It's all in good fun when they break my chops during the game.
-
You shouldn't break his chops when he's already stressed about work.
-
Guys like you come in here to break my chops.
-
You gonna break my chops?
-
Hey, don't break my chops.
-
If you're gonna break my chops, take it on the arches now, understand?
Synonyms
245
1.9
To make fun of someone in a way that annoys them
93
5.8
To mock someone again and again to make them angry or upset
90
3.9
Make someone feel bad by criticizing or teasing them
25
3.9
To make jokes about someone to make them look silly
23
3.4
To make jokes about someone, sometimes to be playful and sometimes to be unkind
8
2.6
To keep criticizing or telling someone to do things in an annoying way
8
7.7
To annoy someone by teasing them repeatedly
7
9.3
To tease or criticize someone in a friendly way
5
9.1
To tease someone in a playful or annoying way
4
9.8
To tease someone again and again with small mean remarks
3
8.0
To annoy someone with small, repeated complaints
2
7.5
To laugh at someone and say unkind things about them
1
8.1
To tease someone in a playful way
1
7.2
To tease someone repeatedly, either playfully or cruelly
1
8.2
To tease someone with repeated mean or mocking remarks
1
9.0
To tease or nag someone, often in a playful way
1
8.7
Tease someone to make them react
1
4.1
To tell someone something that is not true to make them laugh
Antonyms
How Annoying
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense 'to tease or nag' cannot be derived from the literal meanings of 'break' (to damage) and 'chops' (jaws/mouth); the phrase is an informal idiom where the overall meaning is not predictable from its parts. Because the image invoked by the constituents suggests physical harm rather than teasing and the idiom is regionally colloquial, a B1 learner who knows the words would unlikely infer the idiomatic meaning.
Etymology
Break someone's chops likely comes from old slang where chops meant a person's 'jaw' or 'mouth'. The picture of someone trying to 'break' another's chops (their jaw) became a way to say you attack them with words, so today it means 'to tease' or 'to nag'.