pipe — English Dictionary

pipe
Pronunciations (2)
  • /ˈpaɪp/
    Pronunciation notes
    • General-American
    • Received-Pronunciation
  • paɪp

Noun

  1. Meanings relating to a wind instrument. A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube.

    Examples
    More examples (1)

    Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side, The summer's gone and all the roses falling, It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.

  2. Meanings relating to a wind instrument. A tube used to produce sound in an organ; an organ pipe.

    Examples

    Most theater organs use many sets (ranks) of reed and flue pipes of various shapes, pipe scales, and so forth to generate a variety of timbres.

  3. Meanings relating to a wind instrument. The key or sound of the voice.

    Examples
    More examples (1)

    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. Meanings relating to a wind instrument. A high-pitched sound, especially of a bird.

    Examples
    More examples (1)

    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.

  5. Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications.

    Examples
    More examples (1)

    A standard Flight Refuelling Ltd Mk 8 probe nozzle was attached to the probe structural tube and fuel pipe. The pipe was double-walled, and passed through into the fuselage aft of the flight deck; […] A non-return valve was fitted within the fuel pipe aft of the probe nozzle, thus preventing any leakage of fuel if the aircraft lost the probe nozzle inadvertently.

  6. Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications. A water pipe.

    Usage
    • especially
    • in informal contexts
    Examples

    A burst pipe flooded my bathroom.

    More examples (1)

    Corrosion control can be accomplished in distribution systems by adding compounds that form a protective film on the pipe surface, thereby providing a barrier between the water and the pipe.

  7. Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. A tubular passageway in the human body such as a blood vessel or the windpipe.

    Examples
    More examples (1)

    Amongst the vessels of the human body, the pipe which conveys the saliva from the place where it is made, to the place where it is wanted, deserves to be reckoned amongst the most intelligible pieces of mechanism with which we are acquainted.

  8. Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. A man's penis.

    Usage
    • Slang
    Examples

    He grabs my legs and throws them over his shoulders, putting his big pipe inside me […]

    He punctuated his demand with a deep thrust up CJ's hole. His giant pipe drove almost all the way in, pulsing against his fingers beside it.

    More examples (1)

    He laughed as he knelt down between Duncan's splayed thighs and tore open a packaged condom, then rolled it down over his big fuck-pipe.

  9. Meanings relating to a container. A large container for storing liquids or foodstuffs; now especially a vat or cask of cider or wine. (See a diagram comparing cask sizes.)

    Examples

    Meronym: pipestave

    More examples (2)

    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.

    My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts.

  10. Meanings relating to a container. The contents of such a vessel, as a liquid measure, sometimes set at 126 wine gallons; half a tun.

    Synonyms
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    Again, by 28 Hen. VIII, cap. 14, it is re-enacted that the tun of wine should contain 252 gallons, a butt of Malmsey 126 gallons, a pipe 126 gallons, a tercian or puncheon 84 gallons, a hogshead 63 gallons, a tierce 41 gallons, a barrel 31½ gallons, a rundlet 18½ gallons.

  11. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. 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.

  12. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. A type of pasta similar to macaroni.

  13. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. A vertical conduit through the Earth's crust below a volcano through which magma has passed, often filled with volcanic breccia.

    Synonyms
    Examples
    More examples (2)

    While the pipe of a conventional volcano may extend down 50 miles or so, the volcanic pipes that pick up diamonds along the way had to go much deeper, perhaps as deep as 300 miles.

    Some researchers think that the warming was caused as kimberlite pipes (volcanic vents originating deep in the Earth’s mantle) reached the surface near Lac de Gras in northern Canada and released huge amounts of carbon.

  14. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. One of the goalposts of the goal.

  15. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. An elongated or irregular body or vein of ore.

  16. Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. 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.

    Usage
    • Australia
    • Colloquial
    • Historical
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    On Thursday Mr. William Bland, formerly a Surgeon in the Royal Navy, […] was brought to trial on a charge of libelling the Governor [Lachlan Macquarie], by the composition and publishing of various letters and verses contained in a manuscript book dropped on the Parramatta Road—and thence brought to light. […] [H]owever lenient the sentence passed upon this young man, yet, it is much to be hoped, that from his example pipe-making will in future be reposed solely in the hands of Mr. Wm. Cluer [an earthenware pipe maker] of the Brickfield Hill.

  17. Meanings relating to computing. A mechanism that enables one program to communicate with another by sending its output to the other as input.

  18. Meanings relating to computing. A data backbone, or broadband Internet access.

    Usage
    • Slang
    Examples

    A fat pipe is a high-bandwidth connection.

  19. Meanings relating to computing. The character |.

    Usage
    • metonymically
    Examples

    While parseing an xml document( sax parser ), trying to replace ' | ' with ' & ' , it finds the pipe, but won't replace with amper.

  20. Meanings relating to a smoking implement. 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.

    Broader terms
    Examples
    More examples (2)

    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.

    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.

  21. Meanings relating to a smoking implement. The distance travelled between two rest periods during which one could smoke a pipe.

    Usage
    • Canada
    • US usage
    • Colloquial
    • Historical
  22. A telephone.

    Usage
    • Slang
    Synonyms
    Examples

    “Let's try to get on the pipe to Admiral Collier again.”

Verb

  1. To play (music) on a pipe instrument, such as a bagpipe or a flute.

    Usage
    • Transitive or intransitive
    Examples
    More examples (2)

    [T]he pide Piper with a ſhrill pipe went piping through the ſtreets, and forthwith the rats came all running out of the houſes in great numbers after him; all which hee led into the riuer of Weaſer and therein drowned them.

    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. To shout loudly and at high pitch.

    Usage
    • Intransitive
    Examples

    "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. To emit or have a shrill sound like that of a pipe; to whistle.

    Usage
    • Intransitive
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    [W]ith the mariners A fellow-mariner,—and so had fared Through twenty seasons; but he had been rear'd Among the mountains, and he in his heart Was half a Shepherd on the stormy seas. Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds Of caves and trees: […]

  4. Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.

    Usage
    • Intransitive
  5. Of a metal ingot: to become hollow in the process of solidifying.

    Usage
    • Intransitive
  6. To convey or transport (something) by means of pipes.

    Usage
    • Transitive
  7. To install or configure with pipes.

    Usage
    • Transitive
  8. To dab moisture away from.

    Usage
    • Transitive
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    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. To lead or conduct as if by pipes, especially by wired transmission.

    Usage
    • Figurative
    • Transitive
    Examples

    Soft baroque music pipes through the ornate, dripping-with-gold church sanctuary.

  10. To directly feed (the output of one program) as input to another program, indicated by the pipe character (|) at the command line.

    Usage
    • Unix
    • Transitive
    Examples

    We can just pipe the output of our command into sed to get rid of any leading whitespaces.

  11. To create or decorate with piping (icing).

    Usage
    • Transitive
    Examples

    to pipe flowers on to a cupcake

    This means a quantity of runouts can be made in advance, allowing more time to flat ice and pipe the cake.

  12. To order or signal by a note pattern on a boatswain's pipe.

    Usage
    • Transitive
    Examples

    Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go.

  13. To have sex with a woman.

    Usage
    • Slang
    • Transitive
    • of a man
    Examples

    How you got everybody lit, pipin' up? Oh, she bad with no swag, I can pipe her up Made my last one my last one, I'm wifin' her

    Now this bitch calling me Pacino, she thinks she fifer The only thing on my mind is tryna pipe her

  14. To see.

    Usage
    • Dated
    • Slang
    • Transitive
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    So I went and laid down on the grass. While laying there I piped a reeler whom I knew. He had a nark (a policeman's spy) with him. So I went and looked about for my two pals, and told them to look out for F. and his nark.

    "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. To invent or embellish (a story).

    Usage
    • US usage
    • Slang
    Examples
    More examples (1)

    […] 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.

    If there was a lull in criminal activity, reporters were not above "piping" a story.

    Reporters today supposedly do not use "piped" stories because they are unethical.

  16. To hit with a pipe.

    Usage
    • Transitive
    Examples

    It goes without saying at every turn the cops and I were at it. It was said he may not be a great fighter but he'll stab or pipe anyone, cop or con.

Noun

  1. a tube with a small bowl at one end; used for smoking tobacco

    Synonyms
    Broader terms
  2. a long tube made of metal or plastic that is used to carry water or oil or gas etc.

    Synonyms
    Broader terms
  3. a hollow cylindrical shape

    Synonyms
    Broader terms
  4. a tubular wind instrument

    Broader terms
  5. the flues and stops on a pipe organ

    Broader terms

Verb

  1. utter a shrill cry

  2. transport by pipeline

    Broader terms
    Examples

    pipe oil, water, and gas into the desert

  3. play on a pipe

    Broader terms
    Examples

    pipe a tune

  4. trim with piping

    Examples

    pipe the skirt

Word forms
pipespipespipingpipedpiped

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