This blog describes one possible inspiration for the phrase “A Chip On Your Shoulder”.
Have you ever seen pictures of Elizabethan era clothing? Back then it was the fashion to wear a big circular collar around the neck like the one in this picture.
Why did the people of that era choose that type of collar as a fashion statement? The collar looks like it would be uncomfortable to wear.
The author of this blog claims the people of that era wore collars like the one in the picture. because the collar is a duplicate of a similar structure within that area of the human body. That area of the body will only feel the way the collar looks though if the body is developed in a particular way associated with higher level human beings.
The phrase “A Chip On Your Shoulder” is used to describe a person who feels some kind of grudge or grievance. The author of this blog claims the emotions and thought processes associated with a grudge or a grievance are the result of a gap in the circular collar within the body in the neck area. The next picture has an area of the collar colored blue to represent a gap in the collar.
The blue area of the collar that is removed to create the gap would be a “chip” or piece of the collar.
What would be visible if there was a gap or a chip in the collar of the Elizabethan picture where it was colored blue? The shoulder would be visible if the part of the collar covering it was removed. Since it is not possible to remove the collar so the shoulder underneath it is visible, a section of the upper arm next to below where the chip in the collar is first outlined,
then a copy of the upper arm is made and pasted over the collar and outlined in blue to help distinguish it from the surrounding area.
In the next picture, all of the collar except the part where the chip was taken out has been outlined.
The author of this blog believes that hundreds of years of observation and experience of their fellows taught human beings that any of their fellows in whom the collar like structure within the body had developed a gap or chip in it around the shoulder area, would exhibit certain emotional and intellectual behavior.
The author of this blog believes the phrase “You have a chip on your shoulder” is actually a sentence fragment. The complete sentence is something like:
“You are thinking and acting the way that you are because You Have A Chip On Your Shoulder area of the natural collar around your neck”.