pip

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small, hard seed inside an apple, orange, or similar fruit, chiefly in British English

   Remove each pip before adding the orange segments to the salad.

2. 2
   noun

   one of the small marks indicating suit or value on a playing card, die, or domino

   The five red pips on the card formed a neat pattern.

3. 3
   noun

   a short electronic signal or a small spot representing a detected object on a radar display

   A faint pip on the radar marked the approaching aircraft.

4. 4
   noun

   an old term for a minor illness, especially a respiratory disease of birds

   The farmer isolated the hen when he suspected it had the pip.

Several homonyms converged in this spelling. The fruit-seed sense is a shortening of pippin. The disease sense descends through Middle English pippe and Middle Dutch pip from post-classical Latin pipita, related to Latin pituita ('mucus, phlegm'). The mark and electronic-signal senses extend the idea of a small spot or point.

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