white chip
- noun
- During the game, I noticed that many players preferred using white chips for their bets.
Examples
-
The dealer stacked the white chips neatly next to the other colored tokens.
-
She has a lot of white chips.
Fiction book (1993) -
He throws a pile of blue and white chips on the table.
Fiction book (1998) -
At the poker table, I exchanged my cash for white chips worth ten dollars each.
Synonyms
A small flat round token used at gambling tables to represent money
A small round disk that stands for money in card games like poker
How Valuable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'white' (a color) with 'chip' (a flat round token): a white-colored gambling token. While the specific convention that white chips often represent a low monetary value is cultural, the basic referent (a chip that is white) is transparent and easily understood by a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
The noun white chip comes from poker and other gambling sets where chips are different colors for different amounts. Because players often used the white chip as the 'smallest value', a white chip came to mean a 'low value' gambling token.