piping

See also: pīpíng

English

Piping (plumbing) in a mechanical room.

A uniform hat with red piping. (Sewing ornamentation.)

Piping decorative features onto a cake with a piping bag.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈpaɪpɪŋ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪpɪŋ

Verb

piping

1. present participle and gerund of pipe

Noun

piping (countable and uncountable, plural pipings)

1. The process of an animal just beginning to break out of its egg; precedes hatching.
2. The sound of musical pipes.
   • a. 1823 (date written), Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn of Pan”, in Mary W[ollstonecraft] Shelley, editor, Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, London: […] [C. H. Reynell] for John and Henry L[eigh] Hunt, […], published 1824, →OCLC, page 169:

     The cicale above in the lime, / And the lizards below in the grass, / Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, / Listening to my sweet pipings.

3. An act of making music or noise with pipes.
4. A system of pipes that compose a structure; pipework.

   the piping of a house

5. (sewing) An ornamentation on the edges of a garment; a small cord covered with cloth.
6. (cooking) Icing extruded from a piping bag.
7. (botany) A piece cut off to be set or planted; a cutting.
8. (botany) propagation by cuttings

Derived terms

• pied-piping
• piping shrike
• piping times
• piping times of peace

 

Adjective

piping (not comparable)

1. High-pitched.

   His piping voice could be heard above the hubbub.

   • September 8 2022, Stephen Bates, “Queen Elizabeth II obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     The princess had made occasional wartime radio broadcasts, her piping, stilted voice, speaking in cut-glass tones to the children of the empire, but it was at the time of her 21st birthday in 1947 that she made perhaps the most significant radio address of her career, at the end of a royal tour of South Africa, laying out the guidelines that would govern her throughout her reign:

Derived terms

• hot piping
• piping hot
• pipingly

See also

• Wikipedia article on bagpipes