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When you sharpen your pencil with a pencil sharpener, you have some thin flat pieces of wood that might be in the shape of a cone.

What is that piece called?

Is it a chip?

apaderno
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Tom
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    I'm pretty certain you could have looked up the term in your native language in any bilingual dictionary or online translator. – Mari-Lou A Nov 25 '23 at 13:28
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    @Mari-LouA, it'll be "the skin of the pencil" – Tom Nov 25 '23 at 14:11
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    It wouldn't be translated as that. Try Google translator – Mari-Lou A Nov 25 '23 at 14:19
  • If you over-sharpen a pencil and the tip breaks off, that might be called a "chip". – Buffy Nov 25 '23 at 19:45
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    @Buffy; Tom No, it might not. Not even if you thought Mari-LouA or anyone else here should be doing your research for you. Please be sure, I have no intention of dragging Mari-LouA into anything… I merely happen to agree…

    I suggest there is not, never has been and is never likely to be any consensus. Why not is a different Question and if you Post that, I'll try to Answer it.

    My own suggestion would be a 'shaving' or a 'flake' and please remember that however thin, that piece of wood could never rightly be described as 'flat.' Does that work for you?

     – Robbie Goodwin Nov 25 '23 at 23:32
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    I swear this question has been asked, years ago! (Perhaps on the sister site?) – Fattie Nov 26 '23 at 13:50
  • Hi @Tom thanks for the excellent question. Answer is No, they would never be called "chips" as that is something very specific and unrelated. – Fattie Nov 26 '23 at 13:52
  • I have two pencil sharpeners - one, just like the one in the picture, where you rotate the pencil against a blade, and the shavings fall wherever you let them. Also one that we call Panda because he is made to look like one. He has a hole where his nose would be, for the pencil. You pinch his ears together to open a gripper before you push the pencil in, and when you let them go it is gripped. You turn a handle in his back to rotate a set of slanted blades against the pencil. His lower body is a drawer to collect the shavings. My wife, an artist, says he makes the pencils too sharp. – Michael Harvey Nov 26 '23 at 16:24
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    @Fattie Not true. If you use a pencil sharpener, they are called shavings but if you use a lathe to sharpen your pencil, then they are called chips. – DKNguyen Nov 26 '23 at 23:18
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    hi DKN. I'm afraid I disagree. If by lathe you mean wood turning, that's referred to as shavings. (And the silver pencil sharpener seen in the photo is indeed .. a lathe; you turn the object rather than the lathe spinning.) Shavings are (you guessed it :) ) made by shaving. Chips are made by chipping. If you sharpen a pencil using a knife, chipping off little bits (as some artists do) then those are called .... chips! – Fattie Nov 27 '23 at 11:58
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    The wood shavings are curly, not flat. – Lambie Nov 27 '23 at 15:18
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    @Mari-LouA This is exactly the sort of item that can be difficult to translate using a dictionary. If the common term is a generic term, the literal translation may not match up in the target language. Apparently the OP's language calls it the "skin," but that does not match up with "skin" in English. As for Google Translate: it is useful, but not to be trusted, as it can make mistakes that a human would not make. You should verify Google Translate with a native speaker for anything other than casual conversation. – trlkly Nov 28 '23 at 07:16
  • @Trikly If Tom really meant that in his own language, such bits were called 'the skin of the pencil' don't you think he should have explained that, at least in the exposition, if not in the Question title?

    Either way, do think it might be helpful to know what language Tom uses?

    Until we know, the the Question falls down on the differences among British, French and US American 'chips', 'crisps' and 'pomme frits' which each nation seems to think should be obvious to the others when in fact all that matters is that they are different.

     – Robbie Goodwin Nov 28 '23 at 21:06
  • related: eraser savings on ELU – Conrado Nov 28 '23 at 21:20

3 Answers3

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Thin slivers of wood made by a blade, e.g. a pencil sharpener, carpenter's tools, etc, are called [wood] shavings. Those made by sharpening a pencil may be more specifically called pencil shavings, or, at least in the UK, pencil sharpenings (with thanks to George Savva).

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Michael Harvey
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    And to make this answer complete (with regard to the OP), no these don’t qualify as chips. Wood chips are thicker than wood shavings. The distinction gets gray, of course, but as a rough guide I’d say wood chips are thicker than 1 mm and wood shavings are thinner than 1 mm. Or thereabouts. If held in a flame, a wood chip would catch fire fairly easily, but a wood shaving would ignite almost immediately and be consumed in just a few seconds. – Paul Tanenbaum Nov 25 '23 at 13:16
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    I would also say, if we are getting exact here, that a wood shaving was shaved (a particular kind of action) from a piece of wood, whereas a wood chip was either broken (chipped) off a piece of wood, or created when a piece of wood has been completely broken. – Michael Harvey Nov 25 '23 at 13:20
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    I agree with that. Chips generally result from breakage across a surface or discrete blows more obliquely (as from a chisel). Shavings result from continuous sliding of a very sharp object (as a plane) along and nearly parallel to the surface. – Paul Tanenbaum Nov 25 '23 at 13:26
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    And taken together—when considered as the waste material resulting from some shaping process—the shavings and chips collectively are called swarf, though this term is fairly technical and not in wide, everyday use. – Paul Tanenbaum Nov 25 '23 at 13:38
  • Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed. – Laurel Nov 27 '23 at 21:41
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I would probably just call them 'the bits', but you could call them wood shavings.

Kate Bunting
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    Definitely 'pencil shavings' for me. – Michael Harvey Nov 25 '23 at 08:53
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    When I was a kid my pal and I used to pretend that pencil shavings were 'tobacco' and try to smoke them in my dad's old pipe. Now, more than 60 years later, I was Googling for 'pencil shavings' and found a Quora page about exactly that. Message: don't do it! – Michael Harvey Nov 25 '23 at 09:45
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    "The bits" sounds like an unspecific catchall category. "Shavings" is much better. – Joachim Nov 25 '23 at 10:14
  • Michael Harvey's shavings are wood shavings, but the pencil shavings in OP's picture aren't wood shavings! They aren't big enough. And the pencil's not big enough. They are shavings, of course, though. And pencil shavings too. (For me, anyway) – Araucaria - Not here any more. Nov 26 '23 at 11:03
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    In the OP's picture, the shavings are across the grain, versus @MichaelHarvey's picture with the cuts along the grain. With a sharp chisel you can get shavings off the end or cross grain, but it is much more difficult. If the chiseling is done across the grain or on the end grain, the shavings would be much shorter. The OP's shavings could be small because the blade is dull, and could be longer if the blade was sharper. You get shavings from the shaving action, and they can degrade to chips if the shaving doesn't work well. It is a matter of degree. – Dave X Nov 27 '23 at 05:57
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I think 'shavings' (as other answer and comments) is probably accurate, but my first thought (native British English speaker) was 'sharpenings'.

'Sharpenings' gets lots of relevent hits on Google (eg https://www.123rf.com/photo_59315311_close-up-of-colorful-wooden-pencil-sharpenings.html) so it must be used to some extent.

And here it is as a noun in the Collins dictionary (second definition): https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/sharpening

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George Savva
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