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)
- (colloquial) Clipping of champion.
- (colloquial, in the plural) Clipping of championship.
- The team failed to make it to the Champs.
- (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.
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Pronunciation
- (US, UK, General American, Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /t͡ʃæmp/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
- Rhymes: -æmp
Verb
champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champing, simple past and past participle champed)
- (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[iam] Stansby [for Matthew Lownes], 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
Translations
Derived terms
Etymology 3
From champagne by shortening.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ʃæmp/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Noun
champ (uncountable)
- (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
Alternative forms
- champe (obsolete?)
Noun
champ (plural champs)
- (architecture, obsolete or rare) The field or ground on which carving appears in relief.
- (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.'
Verb
champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champing, simple past and past participle champed)
- To camp overnight in a historic church as a novelty or part of a holiday.
Related terms
References
- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
Franco-Provençal
French

Etymology
Inherited from Middle French champ, from Old French champ, inherited from Latin campus (“field”). Doublet of camp and campus.
Pronunciation
Noun
champ m (plural champs)
- field in its various senses, including:
- a wide open space
- an area of study
- (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)
- (heraldry) the background of a shield's design
Derived terms
- à tout bout de champ (“constantly, at the drop of a hat”)
- à travers champs
- alouette des champs
- champ clos
- champ de bataille (“battlefield”)
- champ de course
- champ de foire
- champ de force
- champ de manœuvres
- champ de Mars
- champ de mines
- champ de tir
- champ de vision (“field of view, line of sight”)
- champ des morts
- champ du repos
- champ d’action
- champ d’aviation
- champ d’honneur
- champ d’observation
- champ électrique
- champ électromagnétique
- champ gravitationnel
- champ lexical
- champ libre
- champ magnétique (“magnetic field”)
- champ opératoire
- champ scalaire
- champ sémantique
- champ tensoriel
- champ vectoriel
- champagne
- Champagne
- champi
- champs Élysées
- champ’
- clé des champs
- contrechamp (“reverse shot”)
- courir les champs
- échampir
- hors-champ
- mettre aux champs
- prêle des champs
- prendre du champ
- prendre la clé des champs
- prendre la clef des champs
- réchampir
- sur-le-champ (“immediately, at once, straightaway”)
- travaux des champs
Descendants
- → English: champ
Further reading
- “champ”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
Old French
Pronunciation
- (classical) IPA(key): /ˈt͡ʃamp/, (northern) /ka-/
Noun
champ oblique singular, m (oblique plural chans, nominative singular chans, nominative plural champ)
- field
- (by extension) battlefield
Scots
Etymology
Late Middle English, probably imitative.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [tʃam], [tʃamp], [dʒam], [dʒamp]
Verb
champ (third-person singular simple present champs, present participle champin, simple past champit, past participle champit)
- to mash, crush, pound
- to chew voraciously