pipe down, (to)
pipe down, (to)
(To) be quiet. This term comes from the navy, where the boatswain’s signal for “All hands turn in” was sometimes made on a whistle or pipe. By 1900 Dialect Notes included a definition (“to stop talking”). Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson used both forms, “Pipe down!” and “to pipe down,” in their play What Price Glory? (1926).
See also: pipe
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- cherry ripe
- whistle
- screwage
- meat whistle
- wet one's whistle, to
- hash pipe
- hold you hard
- bowl up
- give (someone/something) the once-over, to
- pipe away