pro tip

Meanings

1. A useful piece of advice.

Etymology

Originally merely a sum of parts collocation (= professional tips), as for example in pro tips for solid joints [in woodworking] (Popular Science, March 1959), pro tips for hunting with a camera (Field & Stream, September 1978), and pro tips on the course or court from golf pros and tennis pros. In the era of videogaming, the camel case solidification as ProTip, a name for small pieces of gameplay advice used as screenshot captions in GamePro magazine, added a lexicalized dimension to yield a true compound. The advice in a hoax version of a ProTip for id Software's Doom ("To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies") was so comically obvious that it later became an Internet catchphrase.