also chop-stick, "small stick of wood or ivory used in pairs in eating" 1690s, a term considered unique to the English.
The usual Chinese word is k'wai tse which is variously translated as "fast ones" or "nimble boys." This name is said to have come about as a euphemism for the older way of writing the word, transliterated zhù, which resembled the inauspicious words for "stop" and for "worm-eaten." The English is perhaps a sailors' partial translation of k'wai tse, in which case the first element is from pidgin English chop, from Cantonese gap "urgent" (compare chop-chop.)
Another possibility is that the word has no exotic elements and is native English from one of the senses of chop. One explanation which is declared in 18c. sources links it with English slang chop, "mouth, jaw" (see chops) giving the meaning "mouth sticks." There are also senses of chop meaning food or eating, as "You are for making a hasty meal, and for chopping up your entertainment like a hungry clown" [Dryden, The Spanish Friar]. Compare the German name Essstäbchen, "eat-sticks."
Earlier in English chopstick was a kind of iron crossbar on a fishing boat (1610s) "so called because the stick divides the fishing-line in two" (OED) and this too could have influenced the name. The 1811 edition of Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue offers chop-stick as slang for a fork.
Chopsticks as the name of a two-fingered piano exercise is attested by 1893, probably from the resemblance of the fingers to chopsticks.
