Chip on Your Shoulder
"To carry a grudge or a persistent, defensive resentment, as if spoiling for a fight."
Traces to a genuine 19th-century American custom, especially recorded in New England, where a boy looking to pick a fight would balance a wood chip on his shoulder and dare anyone to knock it off. If someone did, a fight was considered fair and already agreed to. The literal practice faded, but the figurative sense, someone visibly primed for a confrontation, stuck around. It's documented in American newspapers from the 1830s.
Sources: Documented in American newspaper usage from the 1830s, including the Long Island Telegraph (1830); cited in major etymological dictionaries.
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