What does "pipe" mean?
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.
Pipe
/ˈpaɪp/ name, noun, verb, slang
name, noun, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level
Meaning at a glance
- Primary sense: 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.
- Grammar: pipe is listed as name, noun, verb, slang.
- Nearest alternatives: tobacco pipe, tube, adjutage, aerophone.
- Useful contrasts: block, cigarette, drain.
- Usage evidence: If you have something to say, say it now or pipe down.
How to use "pipe"
- Start with the primary definition, then check the part of speech before placing the word in a sentence.
- Compare nearby synonyms to make sure "pipe" carries the exact meaning, tone, and strength you need.
- Use the example sentence as a context check. If your sentence uses the word differently, confirm that the grammar still fits.
Meaning check
- Does the word fit the sentence's grammar?
- Does it match the intended tone rather than only the dictionary definition?
- Would a simpler synonym be clearer for the reader?
- Is there enough surrounding context to prevent ambiguity?
Source and review context
This entry combines structured lexical data with WordToolSet review checks. Definitions, examples, synonyms, and usage notes may come from different source tables, so the page is designed to show evidence from more than one angle before you rely on "pipe" in a final draft.
If a word has several senses, prefer the sense that matches your sentence's grammar and surrounding context. A correct definition can still be the wrong choice when the sentence needs a different register, emphasis, or level of specificity.
Before you rely on this definition
Read the first definition as a starting point, then check the example, synonyms, and part of speech before treating "pipe" as the right word for your sentence.
If your draft is formal, technical, persuasive, or sensitive, compare "pipe" with a nearby alternative so the final choice matches both meaning and reader expectation.
Compare nearby meanings
- Use synonyms when you need a softer, stronger, simpler, or more specific word.
- Use antonyms to check the boundary of the meaning and avoid accidental contrast.
- Use the example sentence to confirm the word behaves naturally in context.
- Keep the original wording when a replacement adds complexity without improving precision.
Definition decision workflow
1. Identify the role
Check whether "pipe" is acting as name, noun, verb, slang in your sentence. A definition is only useful when the grammar matches the way the word is being used.
2. Test the nearest option
Compare it with "tobacco pipe" and other nearby choices to see whether the sentence needs a softer, stronger, or more familiar word.
3. Confirm with context
Use the example sentence below as an evidence check, then read your own sentence out loud to catch tone or rhythm problems.
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Final meaning check
Before publishing a sentence with "pipe", ask whether the word helps the reader understand the idea faster. A precise word should reduce confusion, not simply make the sentence look more polished.
When the definition, synonym evidence, and example context point in the same direction, the word is usually a safer choice. When they conflict, revise the sentence or choose a clearer alternative.
Definitions
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.
"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 Acronym of private investment in public equity. abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
- 3 the flues and stops on a pipe organ wordnet
- 4 Meanings relating to a wind instrument.; 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."
- 5 a long tube made of metal or plastic that is used to carry water or oil or gas etc. wordnet
Show 23 more definitions
- 6 Meanings relating to a wind instrument.; 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."
- 7 a tube with a small bowl at one end; used for smoking tobacco wordnet
- 8 Meanings relating to a wind instrument.; 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."
- 9 a tubular wind instrument wordnet
- 10 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 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."
- 11 a hollow cylindrical shape wordnet
- 12 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. especially
"A burst pipe flooded my bathroom."
- 13 Meanings relating to a hollow conduit.; 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 which we are acquainted."
- 14 Meanings relating to a hollow conduit.; A man's penis. slang
"He grabs my legs and throws them over his shoulders, putting his big pipe inside me […]"
- 15 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.)
"Meronym: pipestave"
- 16 Meanings relating to a container.; 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 gallons, a barrel 31½ gallons, a rundlet 18½ gallons."
- 17 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.
- 18 Meanings relating to something resembling a tube.; A type of pasta similar to macaroni.
- 19 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.
"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."
- 20 Meanings relating to something resembling a tube.; One of the goalposts of the goal.
- 21 Meanings relating to something resembling a tube.; An elongated or irregular body or vein of ore.
- 22 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. Australia, colloquial, historical
"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."
- 23 Meanings relating to computing.; A mechanism that enables one program to communicate with another by sending its output to the other as input.
- 24 Meanings relating to computing.; A data backbone, or broadband Internet access. slang
"A fat pipe is a high-bandwidth connection."
- 25 Meanings relating to computing.; The character |.
"While parseing an xml document( sax parser ), trying to replace ' | ' with ' & ' , it finds the pipe, but won't replace with amper."
- 26 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.
"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."
- 27 Meanings relating to a smoking implement.; The distance travelled between two rest periods during which one could smoke a pipe. Canada, US, colloquial, historical
- 28 A telephone. slang
"“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. ambitransitive
"[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."
- 2 utter a shrill cry wordnet
- 3 To shout loudly and at high pitch. intransitive
""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."
- 4 trim with piping wordnet
- 5 To emit or have a shrill sound like that of a pipe; to whistle. intransitive
"[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: […]"
Show 15 more definitions
- 6 play on a pipe wordnet
- 7 Of a queen bee: to make a high-pitched sound during certain stages of development. intransitive
- 8 transport by pipeline wordnet
- 9 Of a metal ingot: to become hollow in the process of solidifying. intransitive
- 10 To convey or transport (something) by means of pipes. transitive
- 11 To install or configure with pipes. transitive
- 12 To dab moisture away from. transitive
"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."
- 13 To lead or conduct as if by pipes, especially by wired transmission. figuratively, transitive
"Soft baroque music pipes through the ornate, dripping-with-gold church sanctuary."
- 14 To directly feed (the output of one program) as input to another program, indicated by the pipe character (|) at the command line. Unix, transitive
- 15 To create or decorate with piping (icing). transitive
"to pipe flowers on to a cupcake"
- 16 To order or signal by a note pattern on a boatswain's pipe. transitive
"Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go."
- 17 To have sex with a woman. slang, transitive
"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"
- 18 To see. dated, slang, transitive
"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."
- 19 To invent or embellish (a story). US, slang
"[…] 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."
- 20 To hit with a pipe. transitive
"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."
Proper Noun
- 1 A surname.
- 2 An unincorporated community in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, United States. Named after the calumet (pipe) smoked by native Americans.
Example
"If you have something to say, say it now or pipe down."
Common questions
What is a synonym for "pipe"?
Common synonyms include: tobacco pipe, tube, adjutage, aerophone, anthem, aulos.
How do you use "pipe" in a sentence?
If you have something to say, say it now or pipe down.
How do you pronounce "pipe"?
Pronounced /ˈpaɪp/.
Etymology
Etymology 1
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. Doublet of fife. 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 contexts, calques similar units of measure such as Portuguese pipa. The verb is from Middle English pīpen, pypyn (“to play a pipe; to make a shrill sound; to speak with a high-pitched tone”), from Old English pīpian (“to pipe”).
Etymology 2
English surname, from the noun pipe.