chapfallen

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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🗓️ 26 December 2023

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 26, 2023 is:

chapfallen • \CHAP-faw-lun\ • adjective

Chapfallen (less commonly spelled chopfallen) is a synonym of depressed that means "cast down in spirit." It can also mean "having the lower jaw hanging loosely."

// Gina was chapfallen when she learned that her best friend's visit would have to be postponed.

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Examples:

"The disappointment and grief of the party's base transformed quickly—from chapfallen into broad smiles." — Jonathan Jobson, The Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), 19 Feb. 2023

Did you know?

Finally: an answer to the age-old question "why the long face?" To be chapfallen is, literally, to have one’s jaw in a fallen or lower position, a physical sign of dejection. The chap in chapfallen is a word that dates back to at least the 16th century. It refers to the fleshy covering of the jaw or to the jaw itself and is often used in the plural, as in "the wolf licked its chaps." If that phrase doesn’t seem quite right to you, it’s likely because you are more familiar with chops, an alteration of chaps that is also used to refer to the jaw or the mouth. Accordingly, a variant spelling of chapfallen is chopfallen, which may help us to better understand this somewhat unusual word.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 26th.
0:11.3	Today's word is chap-fallen, spelled as one word chap fall L e n chap fallen is an adjective
0:20.9	It's a synonym of the word depressed that means cast down in spirit. It can also mean having the lower jaw hanging loosely.
0:30.0	Here's the word used in a sentence from the Sunday Herald of Glasgow.
0:35.2	The disappointment and grief of the party's base transformed quickly from chap-fallen into broad smiles. Finally, an answer to the age-old question,
0:45.0	why the long face?
0:47.0	To be chap-fallen is literally to have one's jaw in a fallen or lower position, a physical sign of dejection.
0:55.6	The chap in chap-fallen is a word that dates back to at least the 16th century.
1:01.1	It refers to the fleshy covering of the jaw or to the jaw itself and is often used in the
1:06.8	plural as in the wolf licked its chaps. If that phrase doesn't quite seem right to you, it's likely because you're more familiar with the word chops, an alteration of chaps, that's also used to refer to the jaw or the mouth.
1:21.0	Accordingly, a variant spelling of chap-en is chopfallen, which may help us to better
1:27.9	understand this somewhat unusual word. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
1:34.0	Visit Marion Webster.
1:37.0	Visit Marion Webster.
1:39.0	com today for definitions, word play, and trending word lookups.

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