Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. cheeky, impudent.

1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 2 Dec. 7/4: Staten Island had a sensation last week. A couple of New York sports who were waging war on the chippy birds down there [etc] .
1890		Glasgow Eve. Post 4 Feb. 8/1: ‘You’re a fast Iriend,’ as the wife said to the ‘chippie-chappie’ who brought her husband home at three o’clock in the morning.
1896		Clarion 31 Oct. 1/2: There are times, it seems, when the light and chippy paragraph, the gay and festive absurdity, can't be induced to flow.
1900		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 21 Nov. 2/2: In a bicycle song the fair singer doesn’t kick up [her legs] to any extent, but still is bright and chippy.
1902		G.E. Evans ‘Dick Dooley’s Pants’ in Bulletin Reciter 1880–1901 91: This chippy little nigger and the antics that he played.
1916		T. Burke Limehouse Nights 270: She’s too chippy.
1957		P. Rabe Agreement to Kill (2006) 167: Don’t get chippy. Just do like I say.
2000		Indep. Rev. 4 Jan. 4: Chippy, loud, boastful and unacceptably enthusiastic about making money for himself.

2. angry, irritated.

c.1894		Adele Levey [perf.] ‘Cherro!’ 🎵 If he should feel chippy he had one recipe / The made all his sorrows take wing.
1901		Boy’s Own Paper 24 Aug. 750: I know I feel chippy and heavy often owing to being dragged out too early.
1913		C. Mackenzie Sinister Street I 353: I felt chippy over that friend of mine being killed.
1941		Penguin New Writing No. 4 37: ‘Don’t bother. Here are your gloves.’ ‘No need to be chippy, old fellow.’.
1994		E. St Aubyn Some Hope 332: They said you were ‘chippy’.
1999		Indep. Rev. 9 Nov. 8: I don’t know whether he is chippy about encroaching baldness.
2001		N. Barlay Hooky Gear 100: Till they see I aint no chippy neighbour come to discuss the foulin of the footpath.
2008		Times (London) 16 May 7/5: You pick your way between screaming, weeping, quarrelling girls on any Friday night, and mediate on the grievous misunderstanding of the word ‘respect’ in a chippy generation terrified of powerlessness.

3. resentful, jealous.

1999		Indep. Rev. 1 Nov. 1: All my friends had started playing [...] and I was maybe a bit working-class chippy about it.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 177: They were nothing but chippy bolsheviks avant la lettre, thick as lard when it came to [...] farming’s disciplines.