chip on one's shoulder

plural chips on one's shoulder

1. A form of challenge, in the same spirit as a medieval knight throwing down his gauntlet.

   Leland, in his last issue, struts out with a chip on his shoulder, and dares Bush to knock it off.

   1855, The Weekly Oregonian

   1 more example

   ‘Oh! if I only could get him to knock a chip off my shoulder, and so get round the law, I would give him one of the soundest thrashings he ever had.’

   1830, The Onondaga Standard, Syracuse NY, 8 December

2. idiomaticA habitually combative attitude, usually because of a harbored grievance, a sense of inferiority, or a desire to prove something.

   People are staying home / When they got chips on their shoulder

   2019 [1972], Willie Hutch, Kathy Wakefield, “Try It, You’ll Like it”, in You're the Man, performed by Marvin Gaye

   3 more examples

   The city of Herculaneum […] held its neighbors in hearty contempt, like the youth who has suddenly found his man's strength, and parades round with a chip on his shoulder.

   1906, Harold MacGrath, chapter 4, in Half A Rogue

   The young John McCain was a constant breaker of rules, a brawler and a slob, an undersize punk with an oversize chip on his shoulder.

   2008 August 28, James Carney, Michael Grunwald, “Understanding John McCain”, in Time

   [O]ne minute this "Jihadi John" was struggling to get by, and get accepted, in drizzly England, unemployed with a mortgage to pay and a chip on his shoulder, and the next he stands in brilliant Levantine sunlight, where everything is clear and etched, at the vanguard of some Sunni Risorgimento intent on subjecting the world to its murderous brand of Wahhabi Islam.

   2014 November 17, Roger Cohen, “The horror! The horror! The trauma of ISIS [print version: International New York Times, 18 November 2014, p. 9]”, in The New York Times

3. idiomaticA tendency to take offence quickly.