Meaning
To break into a conversation or discussion, especially to add an opinion, remark or agreement; also to join in or fit in harmoniously with something, the way bells or voices join a peal. Standard in both British and American English, and often followed by with, as in chime in with a suggestion. Usually intransitive; the nuance ranges from welcome agreement to mildly unwelcome interruption. Chime in with something covers both adding a comment and being compatible with an idea. Regional use: All major English varieties.
Origin
The verb chime is Middle English - the OED's factsheet gives earliest evidence from before 1340, in the writing of Richard Rolle - taken from the noun chime, known from before 1300 and ultimately from Old French chimbe and Latin cymbalum: the word first meant a cymbal and only later shifted to a set of bells. Bells that chime in join an existing peal, so the phrase was first used literally and musically, of joining harmoniously or in unison: Merriam-Webster dates that use to 1681, and the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms agrees that the literal usage was first recorded in 1681. The figurative leap to joining a conversation is dated to 1838 by both Etymonline and American Heritage. Wiktionary's citations include an agreeing sense from 1796 (Matthew Lewis, The Monk). So the harmonizing sense is older, while the now-dominant sense of interjecting a remark is nineteenth-century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- chime in with
- chiming in
Usage Examples
- Halfway through the argument my grandmother chimed in with a story about her own schooldays.
- Feel free to chime in if you spot anything we have missed.
- The new artwork chimes in nicely with the gallery's summer theme.