Bleep

How to spell bleep

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bleep

What does bleep mean?

1. nounA short, high-pitched electronic sound, such as that made by a machine or alarm.
2. verbTo replace an offensive or sensitive word with a tone in a broadcast.

Bleep in a sentence

• noun

  The microwave gave a single bleep when the timer ended.

• verb

  The editors decided to bleep the swearing before the show aired.

• noun

  A faint bleep from the smoke alarm warned that the battery was low.

• verb

  Producers usually bleep any names that could identify a witness.

Where does bleep come from?

Language of origin: Other

Bleep is an imitative or echoic word, coined in the twentieth century to imitate the short, high-pitched electronic tone made by machines and radios. It first appeared in English around the 1950s, growing alongside the spread of electronic equipment, satellites, and broadcasting technology that produced exactly that kind of sound. The form is closely related to 'beep', and the two are near twins; the extra 'l' simply gives 'bleep' a slightly sharper, more clipped feel on the tongue. By the 1960s it had taken on the broadcasting sense of covering an offensive word with a tone, so that 'to bleep something out' became standard television jargon. Because the word was invented to sound like the noise itself, its spelling is wonderfully regular: the trap is only ever choosing between 'bleep' and 'blip', which name different sounds.

How the word is built

• bleep (imitative root mimicking a short electronic tone)