: one of a pair of slender sticks (as of wood or plastic) held between the thumb and fingers and used to lift food to the mouth
Never spear food with a chopstick! If you're having trouble picking up your food, a spoon is your plan B.—Laura Barry
—usually used in plural
To eat rice, both etiquette and practicality dictate that you use chopsticks to pick up a morsel of meat, fish, or whatever …; position it over the rice bowl, allowing its juices or sauce to drip into the rice; eat the morsel; then shovel some rice into your mouth with the chopsticks.—Saveur
"… I do get uncomfortable when people use chopsticks for every Asian food. Traditionally, I may use chopsticks when my food is served in a soup bowl with noodles or rice, but we often use forks and spoons for our dishes. …"—Darrell Loo, quoted in Feast
Illustration of chopstick
Examples of chopstick in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the WebFor instance, silence is encouraged between bites at a traditional omakase restaurant, and when a customer rubs their chopsticks together, it’s considered an offense to Japanese restaurant owners, who receive a message that their chopsticks are cheap.—Lily O'Neill, The Denver Post, 29 May 2024 The company claims the chopsticks increased salty taste by as much as 50 percent.—Wes Davis, The Verge, 21 May 2024 Insert a chopstick or wooden skewer into the stem side of the cherry and push the pit out the other side.—Bethany Thayer, Detroit Free Press, 18 May 2024 Online commentators also marveled at Yellen’s dexterity with chopsticks, after a Weibo account affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV released a short video showing her dining at a Cantonese restaurant in Guangzhou.—Nectar Gan, CNN, 8 Apr. 2024 See all Example Sentences for chopstick
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'chopstick.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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