English
pipe
see also: Pipe, PIPE
Etymology

From Middle English pipe, pype ("hollow cylinder or tube used as a conduit or container; duct or vessel of the body; musical instrument; financial records maintained by the English Exchequer, pipe roll"), from Old English pīpe, from Proto-West Germanic *pīpā.

The “storage container” and “liquid measure” senses are derived from Middle English pipe, from pīpe (above) and Old French pipe.

The verb is from Middle English pipen, pypyn ("to play a pipe; to make a shrill sound; to speak with a high-pitched tone"), from Old English pīpian.

Pronunciation
  • (RP, America) IPA: /paɪp/
Noun

pipe (plural pipes)

  1. Meanings relating to a wind instrument.
    1. (musical instrument) A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube. [from 10th c.]
    2. (music) A tube used to produce sound in an organ; an organ pipe. [from 14th c.]
    3. The key or sound of the voice. [from 16th c.]
      • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act I, scene iv], page 257 ↗, column 2:
        For they ſhall yet belye thy happy yeeres,
        That ſay thou art a man: Dianas lip
        Is not more ſmooth, and rubious: thy ſmall pipe
        Is as the maidens organ, ſhrill, and ſound,
        And all is ſemblatiue a womans part.
    4. A high-pitched sound, especially of a bird. [from 18th c.]
      • 1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Part IV”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC ↗, pages 66–67 ↗:
        Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
        The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
        To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
        The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
        So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
  2. Meanings relating to a hollow conduit.
    1. A rigid tube that transports water, steam or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications. [from 10th c.]
      1. (especially in informal contexts) A water pipe.
        A burst pipe flooded my bathroom.
    2. A tubular passageway in the human body such as a blood vessel or the windpipe. [from 14th c.]
    3. (slang) A man's penis.
  3. Meanings relating to a container.
    1. A large container for storing liquids or foodstuffs; now especially a vat or cask of cider or wine. (See a diagram comparing cask sizes.) [from 14th c.]
      Meronym: pipestave
      • 1808–10, William Hickey (memoirist), Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 329:
        Mr Barretto informed us he had shipped two hundred and forty pipes of Madeira [which] not only impeded the ship's progress by making her too deep in the water, but greatly increased her motion.
    2. The contents of such a vessel, as a liquid measure, sometimes set at 126 wine gallons; half a tun. [from 14th c.]
  4. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube.
    1. Decorative edging stitched to the hems or seams of an object made of fabric (clothing, hats, curtains, pillows, etc.), often in a contrasting color; piping. [from 15th c.]
    2. A type of pasta similar to macaroni.
    3. (geology) A vertical conduit through the Earth's crust below a volcano through which magma has passed, often filled with volcanic breccia. [from 19th c.]
    4. (lacrosse) One of the goalposts of the goal.
    5. (mining) An elongated or irregular body or vein of ore. [from 17th c.]
    6. (Australia, colloquial, historical) An anonymous satire or essay, insulting and frequently libellous, written on a piece of paper which was rolled up and left somewhere public where it could be found and thus spread, to embarrass the author's enemies. [from 19th c.]
  5. Meanings relating to computing.
    1. (computing) A mechanism that enables one program to communicate with another by sending its output to the other as input. [from 20th c.]
    2. (computing, slang) A data backbone, or broadband Internet access. [from 20th c.]
      A fat pipe is a high-bandwidth connection.
    3. (computing, typography) The character ''. [from 20th c.]
  6. Meanings relating to a smoking implement.
    1. (smoking) A hollow stem with a bowl at one end used for smoking, especially a tobacco pipe but also including various other forms such as a water pipe. [from 16th c.]
      • 1843 December 18, Charles Dickens, “Stave Four. The Last of the Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC ↗, page 129 ↗:
        Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal-stove, made of old bricks, was a gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
      • 1892, Walter Besant, “The Select Circle”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC ↗, page 46 ↗:
        In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle—a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening for a pipe and a cheerful glass.
    2. (Canada, US, colloquial, historical) The distance travelled between two rest periods during which one could smoke a pipe. [from 18th c.]
  7. (slang) A telephone.
    Synonyms: blower
    • 1980, Charles D. Taylor, Show of Force:
      “Let's try to get on the pipe to Admiral Collier again.”
Synonyms Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Translations Verb

pipe (pipes, present participle piping; simple past and past participle piped)

  1. (ambitransitive) To play (music) on a pipe instrument, such as a bagpipe or a flute.
    • 1789, William Blake, “Introduction”, in Songs of Innocence:
      Piping down the valleys wild / Piping songs of pleasant glee / On a cloud I saw a child. / And he laughing said to me / Pipe a song about a Lamb: / So I piped with merry chear. / Piper pipe that song again – / So I piped, he wept to hear.
  2. (intransitive) To shout loudly and at high pitch.
    • 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter II, in Jacob's Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC ↗; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC ↗, page 17 ↗:
      "Ar—cher—Ja—cob!" Johnny piped after her, pivoting round on his heel, and strewing the grass and leaves in his hands as if he were sowing seed.
  3. (intransitive) To emit or have a shrill sound like that of a pipe; to whistle.
  4. (intransitive) Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.
    Coordinate terms: quack, toot
  5. (intransitive, metallurgy) Of a metal ingot: to become hollow in the process of solidifying.
  6. (transitive) To convey or transport (something) by means of pipes.
  7. (transitive) To install or configure with pipes.
  8. (transitive) To dab moisture away from.
    • 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison in the Stockade”, in Treasure Island, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC ↗, part IV (The Stockade), pages 153–154 ↗:
      Our chimney was a square hole in the roof; it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out, and the rest eddied about the house, and kept us coughing and piping the eye.
  9. (transitive, figuratively) To lead or conduct as if by pipes, especially by wired transmission.
  10. (transitive, computing, chiefly, Unix) To directly feed (the output of one program) as input to another program, indicated by the pipe character () at the command line.
  11. (transitive, cooking) To create or decorate with piping (icing).
    to pipe flowers on to a cupcake
  12. (transitive, nautical) To order or signal by a note pattern on a boatswain's pipe.
    • 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter XXIII.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC ↗, page 298 ↗:
      Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go.
  13. (transitive, slang, of a man) To have sex with a woman.
  14. (transitive, slang, dated) To see.
    Synonyms: Thesaurus:see
    • 1914, Jackson Gregory, Under Handicap:
      "Hey, Greek," Roger was saying, his droning voice coming unpleasantly into the other's musings, "did you pipe that? Did you ever see anything like her?"
  15. (US, journalism, slang) To invent or embellish (a story).
    • 1981, Elie Abel, What's News: The Media in American Society, page 259:
      […] who ostensibly was handed an all-day sucker by a warm-hearted bandit in the act of robbing a candy store of $40, there was no moral outcry. "Find the girl," was the immediate response of competing editors to their reporters at police headquarters. The men of the press, who knew a piped story when they saw one, quickly found another little girl, presented her with a lollipop, and photographed her skipping rope in front of the candy store.
    • 2004, Arthur Gelb, City Room, page 154:
      If there was a lull in criminal activity, reporters were not above "piping" a story.
    • 2008, Homer L. Hall, Logan H. Aimone, High School Journalism, page 91:
      Reporters today supposedly do not use "piped" stories because they are unethical.
Pipe
Etymology

English surname, from the noun pipe.

Proper noun
  1. Surname.
  2. An unincorporated community in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Named after the calumet (pipe) smoked by native Americans.
PIPE
Noun

pipe (plural pipes)

  1. (finance) Acronym of private investment in public equity


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