Pipeline

How to spell pipeline

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pipeline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pipeline mean?

1. nounA long connected line of pipes used to carry oil, gas, water, or other fluids over distance.
2. nounA channel or sequence of stages through which work, products, or candidates steadily progress.

Pipeline in a sentence

• The new pipeline will carry natural gas across three counties.

• The sales team reviewed every deal currently in the pipeline.

• Engineers inspected the pipeline for leaks after the storm.

• Three new features are still in the development pipeline.

Where does pipeline come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'pipe' and 'line', that came together in the industrial nineteenth century. The first element, 'pipe', goes back to Old English 'pipe', borrowed from a Late Latin word 'pipa' meaning a tube or a musical reed; that same root gives us the pipe one plays and the pipe one smokes, both ideas of a hollow tube. The second element, 'line', descends from Latin 'linea', 'a linen thread' or 'string', which broadened into the sense of any continuous length. Put together as 'pipeline', the word originally named the long connected run of pipes laid to carry oil, gas, or water across distance, a usage that surged with the American oil boom of the 1860s. From that concrete plumbing image it spread figuratively to mean any channel or sequence of stages through which something steadily flows, such as a sales pipeline or a development pipeline. Because both parts are familiar everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the only real care needed is keeping it a single solid word rather than two.

How the word is built

• pipe (tube/conduit)
• line (continuous length/series)