Green’s Dictionary of Slang

chop n.2

[orig. W.Afr. pidgin, where colonists and Africans alike used it to describe indigenous food. It was further suggested that orig. chop had meant only one dish, long pig, human flesh]

1. food; thus small chop, small items of food.

Show quotations
[UK]H. Nicholls letter 15 Feb. in Hallet Rec. Afr. Assoc. (1964) xi 208: Their food is chop made of yam cut in slices, cayenne pepper, palm oil, and fowl, fish, goat or wild hog [OED].
[UK]‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 197: Let us proceed directly to Dolly’s, take our chop, then a rattler, and hey for the Spell.
[UK] ‘Song of the Steam Coachman’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 220: We take our tea in Tartary, or chop at Coromandel.
[UK]J. Cary Mister Johnson (1952) 213: Chop all right?
[WI]R. Brathwait Kind of Homecoming 121: I’ve some friends there and we can be sure of a bed and some chop.
[US](con. 1969) M. Herr Dispatches 7: Three-star war food, the same chop they sold at Abercrombie & Fitch.
[Aus]J. Carson in Ammon Working Lives 146: He told me to ‘get in for my chop.’ That was no trouble at all as I was growing fast and could eat like a horse.

2. a boat-load of tea.

Show quotations
, , [UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Sl. Dict.

3. (US Und.) tobacco.

Show quotations
[US]F.H. Tillotson How I Became a Detective 90: Chop – Tobacco.

SE in sl. use

In phrases

just the juicy chop

(Aus.) satisfactory, as required.

Show quotations
[Aus]Brisbane Courier 29 May 6/3: ‘Just the glassy marble’ [...] ‘Just the glassy alley,’ ‘Just the juicy chop,’ ‘Just the blob,’ ‘Just the shiny shilling,’ ‘Just the plonk’ are only a few of its offshoots.
[Aus]Punch (Melbourne) 9 May 35/1: ‘What do yer think of 'em?’ ‘They’re just the juicy chop,’ murmured the St. Kilda barracker [...] ‘They’re the limit’.