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To tweak a well-known line from Hamlet, brevity is the soul of quip. While jokes are often brief stories with setups followed by surprising and funny endings (chickens crossing roads, elephant footprints in the butter, etc.) quips are even briefer, and not so planned or scripted. They are more likely to arise naturally in conversation when someone is especially quick-witted, firing off zingers, retorts, or—if you want to get extra fancy about it—bon mots. Brevity also plays a role in quip's etymology: quip is a shortening of quippy, a now-obsolete noun of the same meaning. Quippy's origins are uncertain, but they may lie in the Latin word quippe, meaning "indeed" or "to be sure," which was often used ironically. Quip entered English as a noun in the 1500s, but was verbified within decades; the verb quip means "to make quips" or "to jest or jibe at."
Examples of quip in a Sentence
Ben Travers, IndieWire, 22 May 2026
Kara, wearing a vintage Blondie T-shirt and brown trench coat, fights them off while making sarcastic quips, almost Han Solo-like.
—Kate Aurthur, Variety, 20 May 2026
Lily Templeton, Footwear News, 23 May 2026
Colbert went on to quip about the hantavirus and a sinkhole shutting down a runway at LaGuardia Airport before he was interrupted by Bryan Cranston, who offered from his seat in the audience to be the show’s final guest.
—Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News, 22 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for quip
Cite this Entry
“Quip.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quip. Accessed 29 May. 2026.
Copy CitationKids Definition
quip
1 of 2 nounquip
2 of 2 verb
