chelp
chelp verb: to gossip, particularly in a forthright manner.
Verb
chelp (third-person singular simple present chelps, present participle chelping, simple past and past participle chelped)
- To gossip, particularly in a forthright manner.
- He's not here so we are chelping in the staffroom and ignoring the to-do list on the board.
- Who’s laugh’d at too by every whelp,
For failings which she cannot help?
But silly fools will laugh and chelp,
My Mary.1820, John Clare, “My Mary” in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, London: Taylor and Hessey, p. 87
- To speak rudely or out of turn.
- The teacher got angry at all her chelping.
Forms of chelp
| third-person singular present | chelps |
|---|---|
| present participle | chelping |
| past participle | chelped |
| past | chelped |
Origin of chelp
Probably of imitative origin; perhaps from ch(irp) + (y)elp.
Questions about chelp
- What does chelp mean?
- Chelp means to gossip, particularly in a forthright manner.
- What part of speech is chelp?
- Chelp is a verb.
- What is the past tense of chelp?
- The past tense of chelp is chelped.
Words near chelp in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: chelp (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “chelp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chelp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
