Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The small seed of a fruit, as that of an apple or orange.
  • intransitive verb To break through (the shell) in hatching. Used chiefly of birds.
  • intransitive verb To peep or chirp.
  • noun A short, high-pitched radio signal.
  • noun A disease of birds, characterized by a thick mucous discharge that forms a crust in the mouth and throat.
  • noun Slang A minor unspecified human ailment.
  • noun A dot indicating a unit of numerical value on dice or dominoes.
  • noun A mark indicating the suit or numerical value of a playing card.
  • noun A spot or speck.
  • noun A rootstock of certain flowering plants, especially the lily of the valley.
  • noun Any of the small segments that make up the surface of a pineapple.
  • noun Informal A shoulder insignia indicating the rank of certain officers, as in the British Army.
  • transitive verb To wound or kill with a bullet.
  • transitive verb To defeat.
  • transitive verb To blackball.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To blackball.
  • To peep, pipe, or chirp, as a chick or young bird.
  • To crack or chip a hole through (the shell): said of a chick in the egg.
  • noun A disease of fowls, consisting in a secretion of thick mucus in the mouth and throat, often accompanied by the formation of a sheath-like scale on the end of the tongue: not to be confused with canker or roup.
  • noun The kernel or seed of fruit, as of an apple or an orange.
  • noun One of the spots on dice or on playing-cards: thus, the ace has one pip; the ten, ten pips.
  • noun One of the rhomboid-shaped spaces into which the surface of a pineapple is divided.
  • noun A trade-name used by manufacturers and dealers in artificial flowers for an imitation of the central part of a flower which bears the seeds or fruit.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A seed, as of an apple or orange.
  • noun A contagious disease of fowls, characterized by hoarseness, discharge from the nostrils and eyes, and an accumulation of mucus in the mouth, forming a “scale” on the tongue. By some the term pip is restricted to this last symptom, the disease being called roup by them.
  • noun One of the conventional figures or “spots” on playing cards, dominoes, etc.
  • intransitive verb To cry or chirp, as a chicken; to peep.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To peep, to chirp
  • verb avian biology To make the initial hole during the process of hatching from an egg
  • noun One of a series of very short, electronically produced tones, used, for example, to count down the final few seconds before a given time or to indicate that a caller using a payphone needs to make further payment if he is to continue his call.
  • noun humorous Of humans, a disease, malaise or depression.
  • noun One of the spots or symbols on a playing card, domino, die, etc.
  • noun military, public service One of the stars worn on the shoulder of a uniform to denote rank, e.g. of a soldier or a fireman.
  • noun A spot; a speck.
  • noun A spot of light or an inverted V indicative of a return of radar waves reflected from an object; a blip.
  • noun A piece of rhizome with a dormant shoot of the lily of the valley plant, used for propagation
  • verb To get the better of; to defeat
  • verb To hit with a gunshot
  • noun finance, currency trading The smallest price increment between two currencies in foreign exchange (forex) trading.
  • noun obsolete A pippin.
  • noun A seed inside certain fleshy fruits (compare stone/pit), such as an peach, orange, or apple.
  • noun US, colloquial Something or someone excellent, of high quality.
  • noun UK, dated, WW I, signalese P in RAF phonetic alphabet

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb kill by firing a missile
  • noun a minor nonspecific ailment
  • noun a mark on a die or on a playing card (shape depending on the suit)
  • noun a small hard seed found in some fruits
  • noun a radar echo displayed so as to show the position of a reflecting surface

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for pippin.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Variant of peep and peep.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pippe, from Middle Dutch, phlegm, pip, from Medieval Latin *pippīta, alteration of Latin pītuīta; see peiə- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Possibly from pip.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin uncertain, perhaps related to Etymology 2, above.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Apparently representing a shortened form of pippin.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Imitative.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Imitative.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Abbreviation of percentage in point.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English pippe, from Middle Dutch pip, from post-classical Latin pipita, from Latin pītuīta.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word pip.

Examples

  • The officer who was in charge of the o'pip is here today.

    The Artillery at Passchendaele 1918

  • The pip was a Class A, racing after the outgoing signal like a greyhound after a mechanical rabbit.

    The Martian Way Asimov, Isaac, 1920- 1955

  • The orange tree is produced from the pip, which is sown in a sheltered uncovered bed.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 Various

  • It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on Easter postcards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies.

    The Triumph of the Egg 1920

  • "Perhaps he only has the pip, which is not nearly so bad."

    Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble Howard Roger Garis 1917

  • Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father's brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies.

    Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories Sherwood Anderson 1908

  • The irony being, if Spurs do become legitimate contenders for the title and pip City to it, therefore Man City sponsor their own downfall.

    NEWS.com.au | Top Stories 2011

  • In all pairs involving the Japanese Yen (JPY), a pip is the

    Currency Trading News by DailyFX Thomas Long 2010

  • In all other currency pairs, a pip is the 1/10,000 the place -- 4 places to the right of the decimal.

    Currency Trading News by DailyFX Thomas Long 2010

  • In all pairs involving the Japanese Yen (JPY), a pip is the

    Currency Trading News by DailyFX Thomas Long 2010

  • There are three main operations that can be performed on stacks: inserting an item into a stack (called ‘push’), deleting an item from the stack (called ‘pop’), and displaying the contents of the stack (sometimes called ‘pip’).

    10 Common Data Structures Explained with Videos + Exercises Beau Carnes 2019

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Each of the dots on a die or domino

    February 23, 2007

  • also a small seed (short for pippin, I believe). Or a bit of rootstock from which a new plant can be grown.

    July 24, 2007

  • As in: "The Five Orange Pips."

    "La Grippe, la Grippe! La post nasal drip! With the wheezes and the sneezes and a sinus that's really a pip!" (Guys and Dolls: "Adelaide's Lament")

    September 17, 2009