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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
Bruce Feldman, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2025
Lundgren spoke about leadership and teamwork, but not before managing one quip.
—David Moin, Footwear News, 17 Oct. 2025
Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 24 Oct. 2025
As a colleague quipped, there should be multiple statues, to depict the many ways that bodies can change after having a baby.
—Elisabeth Sherman, Parents, 23 Oct. 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 31 Oct. 2025.
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quip
1 of 2 nounquip
2 of 2 verb
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