Australian and New Zealand term for what the British call crisps and Americans call potato chips — thin, fried, packaged snack chips.
Australian and New Zealand term for what the British call crisps and Americans call potato chips — thin, fried, packaged snack chips. The cold distinguishes them from hot chips, meaning freshly fried potato fries. A perfectly ordinary term in Australasian English, illustrating how the same word does different jobs across regional varieties.
She grabbed a packet of cold chips from the servo on the way home.
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Aussie and Kiwi vocabulary — bogan, daggy, brekkie, sheila, bach, jandals — the whole Antipodean lexicon, including outback dialect, surf and beach culture, and Sydney/Melbourne street slang.
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In Australia and New Zealand, hot chips are what the rest of the world calls french fries — those deep-fried, salted sticks of potato served piping hot, ideally from a fish-and-chip shop. The 'hot' distinguishes them from cold or snack-style crisps (what Australians call 'chips' in a packet). A beloved institution of Antipodean food culture, hot chips from the local chippie, wrapped in butcher's paper and eaten outdoors, are practically a national experience in both countries.
(Australia, New Zealand) french fries.
(North America, Australia, Singapore, Philippines, Hong Kong, NZ) A potato crisp, a thin slice of potato that has been fried.
British English for what Americans call a french fry — a piece of potato cut into strips or chunks and deep-fried. The singular chipped potato emphasises the process: chipping means cutting into pieces, and the potato is then fried. In British fish-and-chip-shop culture, chips (the plural) are a national institution, and the more formal chipped potato occasionally appears in menus, newspapers, or contexts where precision matters. Think fat, soft British chip rather than the thin crispy American fry.
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(Australia, New Zealand) potato chips, crisps.
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