Wipe

How to spell wipe

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wipe

What does wipe mean?

1. verbTo clean or dry a surface by rubbing it with a cloth, hand, or similar.
2. nounA single act of cleaning by rubbing, or a disposable cleaning cloth.

Wipe in a sentence

• verb

  Please wipe the kitchen counter before the guests arrive.

• noun

  She gave the table a quick wipe with a damp sponge.

• verb

  He used a soft cloth to wipe the dust from the screen.

• noun

  Keep a disposable wipe in the car for small spills.

Where does wipe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English verb wīpian, which meant to clean or rub something dry. It belongs to a small family of Germanic words connected with sweeping, twisting, and winding motions, and scholars link it to roots suggesting a back-and-forth rubbing action. The spelling is admirably plain: the long vowel is signalled by the silent final 'e', following the regular English pattern that turns 'wip' into 'wipe', much as 'rip' relates to 'ripe'. Across the centuries its meaning stayed remarkably stable, always tied to cleaning a surface by passing a cloth or hand across it. In modern times it has also picked up a technological sense, as when one erases all the data on a phone or hard drive, which is just the old cleaning idea applied to digital memory.

How the word is built

• wipe (from Old English wīpian: to clean by rubbing); no prefix or suffix in the base form