• @[email protected]
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    32 days ago

    It took me an embarrassing number of decades before I realized they were called (silicon) chips after American snack chips. I always thought it was a weird thing to call something that was plainly a carefully sliced thin sliver and not a piece chipped off anything.

    As I did with potato chips too, but that was an established term in American English and it took me a very long time to realize one was named after the other.

    • Vik
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      32 days ago

      I have a similar memory of when I was young, overhearing my older brother and my uncle talking about chips. I thought they were talking about oven chips (fries elsewhere in the world). They were talking about the semiconductor industry. All I could think about was yummy yummy carbs.

      On an unrelated nore, I now work in the semiconductor industry.