Pipe

How to spell pipe

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pipe

What does pipe mean?

1. nounA tube used to carry water, gas, oil, or other substances.
2. nounA small device with a bowl and stem used for smoking tobacco.
3. nounA simple tubular wind instrument, or one of the tubes of an organ or set of bagpipes.
4. verbTo convey a substance through a tube, or to transmit something along a channel.

Pipe in a sentence

• noun

  A burst pipe flooded the kitchen overnight.

• noun

  He packed his pipe with fresh tobacco and lit it on the porch.

• noun

  The shepherd played a thin, reedy tune on a wooden pipe.

• verb

  Engineers plan to pipe fresh water from the reservoir to the town.

• noun

  The plumber replaced a corroded copper pipe under the sink.

• noun

  Her grandfather kept a wooden pipe on the mantelpiece.

Where does pipe come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Pipe traces back to the Latin verb pipare, which meant 'to chirp' or 'to peep' like a small bird, an echoic word that imitated the thin sound itself. From this came a Vulgar Latin noun pipa for a tube that made such a piping sound, and the word spread into the Germanic and Romance languages, reaching Old English as pipe to mean a wind instrument made from a hollow reed or tube. Because the same hollow shape carried liquids and gases just as well as music, the sense broadened over the centuries to cover any tube used to convey water, gas, or smoke. The tobacco pipe sense arrived in the late 1500s once smoking became fashionable in England. The straightforward spelling, with its silent final 'e' lengthening the vowel, has stayed remarkably stable since Old English.

How the word is built

• pipe (single root from Latin pipare, to chirp; no affixes)