ˌmutton-ˈchop
1. a. A piece of mutton for broiling or frying, usually a division of the loin containing one rib (having the end of the bone chopped off) and half the vertebra to which it is attached.
| 1720 Swift To Stella Wks. 1755 III. ii. 184 A slice of bread and mutton-chop. 1758 Johnson Idler No. 33 ¶25 Could get nothing but mutton-chops off the worst end. 1789 Farley Lond. Art of Cookery (ed. 6) 59 Mutton Chops. Take a loin of mutton, and cut chops from it about half an inch thick. 1848 Dickens Dombey viii, Mrs. Pipchin made a special repast of mutton-chops. |
| attrib. a 1860 Alb. Smith Lond. Med. Student (1861) 103 A lot of cups, egg-shells, mutton-chop bones, and pewter spoons flew up in the air. |
b. pl. slang.| 1865 Hotten's Slang Dict., Mutton-chops, a sheep's-head. |
2. In full
mutton-chop whisker: a side whisker shaped like a mutton-chop,
i.e. narrow at the top and broad and rounded at the bottom (
usu. in
pl.). So
mutton-chop whiskered adj.| 1865 Reader No. 121. 456/2 Mutton-chop whiskers. 1875 [see Burnside, burnside]. 1878 Besant & Rice Celia's Arb. ii, His whiskers..were cut to the old-fashioned regulation ‘mutton-chop’, very much like what has now come into fashion again. 1882 M. E. Braddon Mt. Royal II. x. 216 Where Leonard sat, burly, florid, black-haired, mutton-chop whiskered. 1904 D. C. Murray V.C. 13 The clean-trimmed hirsute mutton-chop on either side the heavy jowl combined to make him intensely respectable to look at. 1972 J. Wambaugh Blue Knight (1973) vi. 83 Some of the boys had mutton-chops and moustaches. 1973 ‘D. Jordan’ Nile Green xxiv. 97 The mutton-chop whiskered auctioneer. 1975 J. Symons Three Pipe Problem iii. 24 A square honest face framed by mutton-chop whiskers. |