What does chopfallen mean?
Chopfallen is an adjective describing someone who looks visibly dejected, humiliated, or crushed by disappointment — as though their jaw has literally dropped. The image behind the word is anatomical: in older English, one's 'chops' were the jaws or fleshy sides of the face, so a chopfallen person was one whose jaw seemed to hang in defeat. The word belongs to a small family alongside its close cousin 'chapfallen', which uses a variant form of the same facial term. Today chopfallen sits in a somewhat literary or formal register; writers reach for it when they want a vivid, physical metaphor for deflation rather than the blander 'sad' or 'upset'. Typical contexts include sports reporting, narrative fiction, and descriptive journalism — a defeated team leaving the field, an applicant turned away from an interview. Its near-synonyms crestfallen, downcast, and dispirited are more common, but chopfallen offers a sharper, more picturesque nuance: disappointment you can see in the sag of a face.
adjectiveHaving the appearance of dejection or humiliation, as though the jaw or lower lip has dropped in disappointment; crestfallen and deflated.
- Dejected, humiliated, or crestfallen in appearance or manner, as if the jaw had dropped in disappointment or shame.
"He returned from the interview looking utterly chopfallen, unable to meet anyone's eye."
"The team left the pitch chopfallen after squandering a two-goal lead."
"She gave him a chopfallen glance when he announced the trip was cancelled."
'Chopfallen' literally pictures your jaw hitting the floor in defeat — the 'chops' are your jaws, making this one of English's most vividly anatomical ways to say 'crushed.'
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of chopfallen
Chopfallen combines 'chop', an older English noun meaning the jaw or the fleshy part of the cheek, with 'fallen', suggesting a jaw dropped in dejection. The word arose in English in the sixteenth century, alongside the variant 'chapfallen', built on 'chap', a related dialectal term for the jaws. Both formations picture humiliation as a slackened, hanging jaw, and they have been used interchangeably since their earliest appearances, with 'crestfallen' later joining them as a synonym from a different metaphor — the drooping of a bird's or animal's crest.
How chopfallen is actually used
Somewhat formal or literary in register today; it appears more often in written prose than everyday speech. The tone carries connotations not just of sadness but of visible, almost physical deflation — disappointment worn on the face. It frequently co-occurs with verbs of appearing or returning ('looked chopfallen', 'came back chopfallen').
Easily confused with chopfallen
Crestfallen derives from 'crest' (a drooping comb or crest) and means generally dejected, while chopfallen specifically evokes the dropping of the jaw or chops in shame or defeat; the two overlap heavily in modern use.