A grammar of quickstick errors
Chopsticks: in cookery, designates:
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014
That's for the English word, now for the Chinese:
The Old Chinese words for "chopsticks" were zhù 箸 (OC *das) and jiā 梜 (OC *keːb). Zhù 箸 is preserved in almost all Min dialects (Taiwanese tī, tū; Fuzhou dê̤ṳ) and some other dialects, especially those in some contact with Min; it is also preserved in loans to other languages, e.g., Korean 젓가락 (jeotgarak), Vietnamese đũa and Zhuang dawh. Starting from the Ming Dynasty, the change to kuàizi 筷子 occurred in Mandarin, Wu, and some Cantonese dialects. The 15th century book Shuyuan Miscellanies (《菽園雜記》) by Lu Rong (陸容) mentioned this change:
The bamboo radical (zhu [the sound is not relevant here 竹) was later added to kuài 快 to form kuài 筷.
(source, with some additions by VHM)
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