pipe

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

Noun

  1. Meanings relating to a wind instrument.
    • 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. - 1913, “Danny Boy: Song Adapted...

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

    2. (music) A tube used to produce sound in an organ; an organ pipe.

      • 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. - 1980, Harvey E[lliott] White, Donald H. White, “Wind Instruments”, in...

    3. The key or sound of the voice.

      • 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. - c....

    4. A high-pitched sound, especially of a bird.

      • 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.
    • 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...

    Synonyms: tube

    1. A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications.

    2. A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications.

      (especially in informal contexts) A water pipe.

      • A burst pipe flooded my bathroom.
      • 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. - 2000, Richard L. Valentine...

      Synonyms: tube

    3. A tubular passageway in the human body such as a blood vessel or the windpipe.

      • 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...

      Synonyms: tube

    4. (slang) A man's penis.

      • He grabs my legs and throws them over his shoulders, putting his big pipe inside me […] - 2006, Monique A. Williams, Neurotica: An Honest Examination into Urban Sexual Relations, [Morrisville, N.C.]: Lulu Enterprises,...
      • 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. - 2010, Eric Summers, editor, Teammates, Sarasota, Fla.: StarBooks, →ISBN,...
      • 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. - 2011, Mickey Erlach, Gym Buddies & Buff Boys, Sarasota, Fla.: StarBooks, →ISBN,...

      Synonyms: tube

  3. Meanings relating to a container.
    • Meronym: pipestave
    • 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. - 1808–10, William...
    • 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. - 1846, Edgar Allan Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado”, in...

    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.)

    2. The contents of such a vessel, as a liquid measure, sometimes set at 126 wine gallons; half a tun.

      • 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...

      Synonyms: butt

      Coordinate Terms: rundlet barrel tierce hogshead puncheon tertian tun

  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.

    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.

      • 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. - 1995 March, Jon Bowermaster,...
      • 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....

      Synonyms: pan

    4. (lacrosse) One of the goalposts of the goal.

    5. (mining) An elongated or irregular body or vein of ore.

    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.

      • 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...
  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.

    2. (computing, slang) A data backbone, or broadband Internet access.

      • A fat pipe is a high-bandwidth connection.

    3. (computing, typography, metonymic) The character |.

      • While parseing an xml document( sax parser ), trying to replace ' | ' with ' & ' , it finds the pipe, but won't replace with amper. - 2001 July 13, JimmyMac, “java and xml”, in comp.lang.java.help (Usenet):

      Synonyms: bar vertical bar vertical line virgule

  6. Meanings relating to a smoking implement.
    • 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...
    • 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. - 1892, Walter Besant, “The Select Circle”, in The...

    Hypernyms: briar

    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.

    2. (Canada, US, colloquial, historical) The distance travelled between two rest periods during which one could smoke a pipe.

  7. A telephone.
    • “Let's try to get on the pipe to Admiral Collier again.” - 1980, Charles D. Taylor, Show of Force:

    Synonyms: blower

Origin

From Middle English pīpe, 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 (“pipe (musical instrument); the channel of a small stream”), from Proto-West Germanic *pīpā. Reinforced by Vulgar Latin *pīpa, from Latin pipire, pipiare, pipare, from pīpiō (“to chirp, peep”), of imitative origin. Displaced native Old English fealh and Old English þrūh. Doublet of fife. Cognate with Dutch pijp, German Pfeife, Danish pibe, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk pipe, Swedish pipa, Faroese and Icelandic pípa. The “storage container” and “liquid measure” senses are derived from Middle English pīpe (“large storage receptacle, particularly for wine; cask, vat; measure of volume”), from pīpe (above) and Old French pipe (“liquid measure”). In specific...

Forms

pipes

Derived

agony-pipe ag pipe agricultural pipe airpipe anonymous pipe bagpipes beampipe between the pipes blastpipe blast pipe blowpipe blue pipe boatswain's pipe boom pipe brakepipe brake pipe broken pipe bubble pipe cesspipe chain pipe churchwarden pipe clerk of the pipe crackpipe crack pipe

Verb

  1. To play (music) on a pipe instrument, such as a bagpipe or a flute.
    • [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...
    • 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...
  2. To shout loudly and at high pitch.
    • "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. - 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter II, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond,...
  3. To emit or have a shrill sound like that of a pipe; to whistle.
    • [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...
  4. Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development.

    Coordinate Terms: quack toot

  5. Of a metal ingot: to become hollow in the process of solidifying.
  6. To convey or transport (something) by means of pipes.
  7. To install or configure with pipes.
  8. To dab moisture away from.
    • 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. - 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson,...
  9. To lead or conduct as if by pipes, especially by wired transmission.
    • Soft baroque music pipes through the ornate, dripping-with-gold church sanctuary. - 2009, Susan Van Allen, “Churches Dedicated to Female Saints—Rome”, in 100 Places in Italy Every Woman should Go, Palo Alto, Calif.:...
  10. To directly feed (the output of one program) as input to another program, indicated by the pipe character (|) at the command line.
    • 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).
    • 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. - 1998, Nicholas Lodge, Janice Murfitt, The International School of Sugarcraft: Book One: Beginners, London:...
  12. To order or signal by a note pattern on a boatswain's pipe.
    • Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go. - 1888–1891, Herman Melville, “[Billy Budd, Foretopman.] Chapter XXIII.”, in Billy Budd and Other Stories, London: John Lehmann, published 1951, →OCLC,...

Forms

pipes piping piped

Derived

pipable pipeable piped link pipe down pipe in pipe off pipe one's eye piper pipe the eye pipe the side pipe up repipe