quip

From a shortening of earlier quippy, perhaps from Latin quippe (“indeed”), ultimately quid (“what”).

• enPR: kwĭp, IPA^(key): /kwɪp/, [kʰw̥ɪp]
• Rhymes: -ɪp

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quip (plural quips)

1. A smart, sarcastic turn or jest; a taunt; a severe retort or comeback; a gibe.
   • 1645, John Milton, L'Allegro:

     Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles.

   • 1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “The Death of the Old Year”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:

     He was full of joke and jest, / But all his merry quips are o'er.

   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     He wrote it down, remembering a quip of Pym's, paraphrased from Clemenceau: "Military intelligence has as much to do with intelligence as military music has to do with music.”

   • 2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club‎^[1]:

     Nobody could ever be bothered to imagine the Sand Snakes beyond personalized weaponry and fake-aggressive quips, none of which were very convincing, and now they don’t even register as dead weight.

• See also Thesaurus:joke

• cryptoquip
• quipful

quip (third-person singular simple present quips, present participle quipping, simple past and past participle quipped)

1. (intransitive) To make a quip.
   • 2012 June 3, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992)”, in AV Club‎^[2]:

     In an eerily prescient bit, Kent Brockman laughingly quips that if seventy degree weather in the winter is the Gashouse Effect in action, he doesn’t mind one bit.

   • 2025 July 23, Richard Wilcock, “A new dawn for the Electrostars”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 26:

     Now, faults can be diagnosed remotely and (in many cases) fixed before the train even reaches the depot. "It's our version of Formula 1 telemetry," quips Hinze. "It is similar for us to how a pit crew in Formula 1 can understand an issue as the car is coming into the pits - because it has that data to hand already. You know what's wrong before it arrives."

2. (transitive) To taunt; to treat with quips.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     the more he laughs, and does her closely quip

   • 1957, H. E. Bates, Death of a Huntsman:

     He did not really mind being quipped; the city gentlemen made him used to that sort of thing.

• Puqi