Where did the saying "Chip off the old block" come from?

Answer 1

The associations are with carpentry, and the block is definitely made of wood.

The first form of the expression was chip of the same block, meaning that a person or thing was made of the same stuff as somebody or something else, so from the same source or parentage. An early example is in a sermon by Dr Robert Sanderson (at one time Bishop of Lincoln), dated 1637: “Am not I a child of the same Adam ... a chip of the same block, with him?”.

Later that century, another form is recorded a chip of the old block, which meant that somebody was the spitting image of his father, or continued some family characteristic. At some point, probably late in the nineteenth century, this was modified to a chip off the old block, which does nothing to change the sense, but is the way it’s now usually written or said.

Answer 2

In years past almost everyone had to chop wood for the kitchen stove and the fireplace. They usually chopped wood on a hardwood stump or block. Occasionally the Axe would miss the piece of wood being chopped and hit the block itself. A piece of hard wood would come off the block. Not to be wasted this chip would be put in the fireplace and it would burn longer because it was harder wood. It was the original"chip off the old block" Today it relates to a person who is so much like his/or her parents, that they are called "a chip off the old block"

Answer 3

It is just something someone coined to mean same as the original.