Definitions

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

  • noun A hollow cylinder or tube used to conduct a liquid, gas, or finely divided solid.
  • noun A section or piece of such a tube.
  • noun A device for smoking, consisting of a tube of wood, clay, or other material with a small bowl at one end.
  • noun An amount of smoking material, such as tobacco, needed to fill the bowl of a pipe; a pipeful.
  • noun A tubular part or organ of the body.
  • noun The passages of the human respiratory system.
  • noun A wine cask having a capacity of 126 gallons or 2 hogsheads (478 liters).
  • noun This volume as a unit of liquid measure.
  • noun A tubular wind instrument, such as a flute.
  • noun Any of the tubes in an organ.
  • noun A small wind instrument, consisting of tubes of different lengths bound together.
  • noun A bagpipe.
  • noun Informal The vocal cords; the voice, especially as used in singing.
  • noun A birdcall.
  • noun Nautical A whistle used for signaling crew members.
  • noun A vertical cylindrical vein of ore.
  • noun One of the vertical veins of eruptive origin in which diamonds are found in South Africa.
  • noun Geology An eruptive passageway opening into the crater of a volcano.
  • noun Metallurgy A cone-shaped cavity in a steel ingot, formed during cooling by escaping gases.
  • intransitive verb To convey (liquid or gas) by means of pipes.
  • intransitive verb To convey as if by pipes, especially to transmit by wire or cable.
  • intransitive verb To provide with pipes or connect with pipes.
  • intransitive verb To play (a tune) on a pipe or pipes.
  • intransitive verb To lead by playing on pipes.
  • intransitive verb To signal (crew members) with a boatswain's pipe.
  • intransitive verb To receive aboard or mark the departure of by sounding a boatswain's pipe.
  • intransitive verb To utter in a shrill reedy tone.
  • intransitive verb To furnish (a garment or fabric) with piping.
  • intransitive verb To force through a pastry tube, as frosting onto a cake.
  • intransitive verb Slang To take a look at; notice.
  • intransitive verb To play on a pipe.
  • intransitive verb To speak shrilly; make a shrill sound.
  • intransitive verb To chirp or whistle, as a bird does.
  • intransitive verb Nautical To signal the crew with a boatswain's pipe.
  • intransitive verb Metallurgy To develop conical cavities during solidification.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See the extract.
  • noun A simple tubular musical instrument, usually of wood.
  • noun One of the tubes of metal or of wood from which the tones of an organ are produced; an organ-pipe.
  • noun Any hollow or tubular thing or part: as, the pipe of a key.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old English pīpe, from Vulgar Latin *pīpa, from Latin pīpāre, to chirp.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English pipe, from Vulgar Latin *pipa.

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Examples

Comments

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  • as punctuation, this is also known as 'vertical' or 'broken bar'.

    April 23, 2008

  • What came up on a search of the Library of Congress for this word.

    Edit: another one.

    Edit 2: This one looks snobby.

    September 19, 2008

  • Oh, that wacky LoC.

    September 19, 2008

  • Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

    September 19, 2008

  • A Portuguese oak barrel with the capacity of 145 gallons (550 liters).

    September 11, 2011