Crisp

Crisp (pronounced krisp)

(1) Hard but easily breakable; brittle (applied especially to food).

(2) Firm and fresh; not soft or wilted (applied especially to food).

(3) Brisk; sharp; clear; decided (applied often to the delivery of words).

(4) Lively; pithy; sparkling.

(5) Clean-cut, neat, and well-pressed; well-groomed.

(6) Invigorating; bracing (usually of the air).

(7) Crinkled, wrinkled, or rippled, as skin or hair.

(8) A snack food, made usually from thinly sliced potato (called chips in some markets).

(9) In cooking, a dessert of fruit, as apples or apricots, baked with a crunchy mixture, usually of breadcrumbs, chopped nutmeats, butter, and brown sugar.

(10) In computing theory, not using fuzzy logic; based on a binary distinction between true and false.

(11) In wine criticism, having a refreshing amount of acidity; having less acidity than green wine, but more than a flabby one.

Pre 900: From the Middle English crisp (curly), from the Old English crisp (curly, crimped, wavy" (of hair, wool etc)), from the Latin crispus (curled, uneven, wrinkled; having curly hair); a doublet of crêpe, crispus was from the primitive Indo-European sker- & ker- (to turn, bend) and cognate with crīnis & crista.  The Old French crespir is related but the English forms came via Latin.  Crisp is a noun, verb & adjective, crisply is an adverb, crisper & crispest are adjectives, crisped & crisping are verbs and crispness & crispation ((1) The act or process of curling, or the state of being curled or (2) a slight twitch of a muscle (both archaic)) are nouns.

The sense of "brittle" may have run in parallel with other meanings but wasn’t recorded until the 1520s and didn’t become a commonly used form until the early nineteenth century, the reason for the sixteenth century evolution unknown but presumably based on the characteristics assumed by certain foods when cooked.  The figurative use to describe something (usually someone) having a "neat, brisk, having a fresh appearance" dates from 1814 and the use to speak of air as “chilly or bracing" apparently didn’t appear until 1869, perhaps surprising give the way earlier romantic poets trawled the language for adjectives.  As a noun, crisp was used from the mid-fourteenth century, originally the name of a light, crinkly material formerly used for kerchiefs, veils etc and a few decades later it was applied to a kind of pastry and by the 1820s, it was a common form of speech by cooks (often a jocular euphemism for "burned to a crisp") to describe anything over-cooked.  Potato crisps, although recipes were circulating in the US as early as 1824, first went on sale in 1897, marketed simply as crisps by 1935 although, in the US, crisps began in 1903 to be used in trade names of breakfast cereals.  The verb crisp (to curl, to twist into short, stiff waves or ringlets (of the hair, beard, mane etc)) was a late fourteenth century derivation from either the adjective or else from the Old French crespir or the Latin crispare, both forms from adjectives.  It was use to mean "to become brittle" after 1805.  The adjective crispy dates from the late fourteenth century in the sense of "curly" and from the 1610s it could also mean "brittle".

Crisps, chips and freedom fries

Smith's "limited edition" Lamington chips, 2020.  The market reaction ensured the edition stayed limited.

The English call them crisps which Australians and New Zealanders once also did but the colonies have long instead called them chips.  They’re called chips also in the US and Canada where it makes sense because what the English call chips, they call French fries which, in the antipodes are called chips.  Despite Australians calling both French fries and crisps “chips”, folk seem not confused, life going on as people adjusting as circumstances dictate.  In Australia, as late as 2003, Smiths still called their chips “crisps” but, bowing to the vernacular, they changed and they’re now definitively “chips”.

About the only place where the names of fried potato snacks proved linguistically controversial was the US when, in the run-up to 2003 invasion of Iraq, after finding the French support for the action insufficiently enthusiastic, the chairman of the committee in charge of operations in the Capitol complex ordered the word "French" removed from all menus, French fries becoming freedom fries and French toast, freedom toast.  It was an echo of one of Washington’s earlier linguistic assaults when, upon the entry of the US to the war in 1917 (which was the act which saw it in 1919 named The World War), German measles had been dubbed liberty measles, hamburgers had become liberty steaks and sauerkraut, liberty cabbage.  Then, even German shepherd dogs had been thought subversive and thus re-named Alsatians although there's no record of the Bush White House taking action against French poodles.  From the Quay d'Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry seemed unimpressed, noting they weren’t devoting much attention to potatoes and that French fries were anyway invented in Belgium in the seventeenth century.  In Washington DC, quietly in 2006 the name changes were reversed.

Stocking up on chips: Lindsay Lohan buying Doritos Nacho Cheese chips and other essential groceries, Los Angeles, 2008.  It's not known if her fondness for Doritos (Doritos the singular, plural and collective form, a single chip being "a Doritos chip") was formed or strengthened by them being on the product-placement list for Mean Girls (2004).

Stocking up on crisps: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend, Samantha Ronson, London, 2008.

Technically and legally, Pringles are not potato chips.  In the snack business the Pringle is a curious outlier because although it looks like a potato chip and most consumers probably think of it as one, the word "chip" appears nowhere on the product packaging or the marketing material.  The company used to use the word but, because Pringles are actually dehydrated potato flakes pressed into their distinctive parabolic shape rather than thin slices of potato, other manufacturers objected and the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) agreed, ruling they couldn't be described as "chips".  Procter & Gamble (which then produced Pringles) thought about it and eventually settled on "potato crisp", a label which was continued when in 2012 the brand was sold to the Kellogg Company.  Introduced in 1968, Pringles are popular with many because they are less greasy than the traditional potato chip (or crisp in some markets).  They're produced by combining dehydrated potato flakes with a mix of corn flour, wheat starch & rice flour to which is added a blend of vegetable oils, seasonings, and additives to form a dough which is rolled into thin sheets and cut into the signature shape.  The cut forms are then fried and coated with a layer of seasoning before being packaged in the famous tubular canister.