"Bargaining Chip": Antedating & Mystery

[Enid Pearsons]

In the spirit of reconciliation, let me offer this. Focusing on what has
been said in this thread on the actual question at hand--the origins of
"bargaining chip"--I don't see a fundamental disagreement. Fred Shapiro says
that "bargaining chip" isn't a gambling metaphor. Rick Kennerly says that
"chip" has related uses in bargaining and gambling. There is no reason why
they can't both be right.

The term "bargaining chip" echoes a familiar pattern in English in which a
noun with meaning in one field is recontextualized by a modifier, often an
attributive noun, to form a two-word compound in another field: Tree
surgeon. Family tree. Plant food. Play doctor (writer who fixes a script).
It would be unusual indeed to find that such a compound originated anywhere
but in the very field to which it applies. For example, you wouldn't expect
to find the earliest uses of "tree surgeon" in the field of medicine, or in
any context other than tree care. Similarly, there is no reason to expect
that "bargaining chip" arose anywhere but in discussions of bargaining. And
just as "tree surgeon" could be coined by analogy with "medical surgeon,"
despite the fact that trees are not involved in medicine, "bargaining chip"
could be coined by analogy with "gambling chip" even though bargaining is
not an element of gambling. All you need is some salient characteristic of
the term "surgeon" or "chip" that makes it appropriate to coopt the word.

This is an old story with "chip." The term originally referred to a
hacked-off piece of wood, but with the help of attributives it has been
extended by analogy to things as diverse as the potato chip, the poker chip,
and the buffalo chip. Without evidence for any other origin (such as
"chit"), it's reasonable to believe that "bargaining chip" is simply a
continuation of this pattern. And of all the kinds of chip available to
serve as inspiration for the term--wood chip, chocolate chip, British word
for French fry, etc.--the gambling chip is far and away the most closely
analogous. It's something that you put on the table and risk losing because
the potential benefit you see from putting it in play is worth the
possibility that you might have to give it up.

If there were no additional evidence about "bargaining chip," this could be
categorized as just (in John Baker's phrase) informed speculation. But in
this case, thanks to Fred Shapiro, we also have a great deal of evidence. He
has been researching this term at least since 1987, when he published a
comment and query about it in _American Speech_ (62:2, p183). At that time
he pushed the history of the term back to 1965, and asked readers for any
information as to earlier origins. More recently he has continued to search
(finding an instance as early as 1960--long before the term became
widespread) and continued to query. In all this research and among all the
linguists who have been queried (including some who were active in the field
when the expression came into use), not a shred of evidence has been found
of any use of "bargaining chip" outside the context of bargaining or for any
analogy other than the obvious and generally accepted one to gambling chips.

This is exhaustive research, and the absolute consistency of the accumulated
evidence is compelling. The only evidence that would be stronger would be a
quote from the actual coiner of the phrase explaining what he had in mind.
You sometimes get that sort of thing with terms made up out of whole cloth,
but rarely with terms that are simply extensions of an existing word.

Further research might uncover some unexpected fact that changes the
picture; that's the way it is in linguistics. Until that happens, though,
there's every reason to accept the conclusions that Fred Shapiro's intensive
research and general linguistic experience point to: the term "bargaining
chip" did not arise in any poker or gambling context, but instead in the
context of discussions about bargaining, and the "chip" is most likely there
by analogy with the chips used in gambling.

Enid Pearsons, lexicographer
Former Senior Editor, Random House Reference