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To tweak a well-known line from Hamlet, brevity is the soul of quip. While jokes are often brief stories with setups followed by surprising and funny endings (chickens crossing roads, elephant footprints in the butter, etc.) quips are even briefer, and not so planned or scripted. They are more likely to arise naturally in conversation when someone is especially quick-witted, firing off zingers, retorts, or—if you want to get extra fancy about it—bon mots. Brevity also plays a role in quip's etymology: quip is a shortening of quippy, a now-obsolete noun of the same meaning. Quippy's origins are uncertain, but they may lie in the Latin word quippe, meaning "indeed" or "to be sure," which was often used ironically. Quip entered English as a noun in the 1500s, but was verbified within decades; the verb quip means "to make quips" or "to jest or jibe at."
Examples of quip in a Sentence
Will Leitch, Vulture, 27 May 2025
Her Liesl is a firecracker who has no qualms about going toe to toe with her powerful father—hilariously deadpan, no-nonsense, and with all the best quips, but also human, with a real heart, conscience, and crises of faith.
—Radhika Seth, Vogue, 18 May 2025
Alison Herman, Variety, 28 May 2025
But in a sign that few Republicans are lining up behind Trump on the matter, the Alabama Republican quipped to The Hill recently that GOP leaders had to go all the way through the conference to get to him in order to block the request for unanimous consent.
—Al Weaver, The Hill, 20 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for quip
Cite this Entry
“Quip.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quip. Accessed 7 Jun. 2025.
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quip
1 of 2 nounquip
2 of 2 verb
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