Meaning & use
Pipping
Last updated
Breaking out of an egg by cracking the shell, said especially of a hatching chick; also, British informal: narrowly defeating someone.
See it in a sentence
The chick spent hours pipping its way out of the shell.
The underdog team ended up pipping the favorites by a single point.
A note on using this word
The hatching sense refers to the small hole, or 'pip,' a chick first pecks in the eggshell before fully emerging.
Words with a similar meaning
hatchingedging out
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Another way to use it
2. verb
British informal: to defeat someone by a very narrow margin.
She pipped her rival at the finish line by a tenth of a second.
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