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kip

nounnounverbverbnounnounnounnounverbattested in dialogue

  • //kɪp//

The untanned hide of a young or small beast, such as a calf, lamb, or young goat.

noun

  1. 1

    The untanned hide of a young or small beast, such as a calf, lamb, or young goat.

  2. 2

    A bundle or set of such hides.

  3. 3

    obsoleteA unit of count for skins, 30 for lamb and 50 for goat.

  4. 4

    The leather made from such hide.

    'Stockings, madam? Shoes?' 'Yes, your Honor — both.' 'Yarn, perhaps? Morocco?' 'Yarn, your Honor. And kip.'

Etymology

1325–75, Middle English kipp, from Middle Dutch kip, from Middle Low German kip (“pack, bundle of hides”).

noun

  1. 1

    informalA place to sleep; a rooming house; a bed.

  2. 2

    informalSleep, snooze, nap, forty winks, doze.

    I’m just going for my afternoon kip.

  3. 3

    informalA very untidy house or room.

  4. 4

    datedA brothel.

Etymology

1760–70, probably related to Danish kippe (“dive, hovel, cheap inn”) and Middle Low German kiffe (“hovel”). From the same distant Germanic root as cove.

verb

  1. 1

    informalTo sleep; often with the connotation of a temporary or charitable situation, or one borne out of necessity.

    Don’t worry, I’ll kip on the sofabed.

    "Steady on, mate. How was I to know this was your gaff? I was lookin' for somewhere to kip."

    He took off his thick black coat and threw it to Harry. "You can kip under that," he said. "Don' mind it if wriggles a bit, I think I still got a couple o' dormice in one o' the pockets."

verb

  1. 1

    To snatch; take up hastily; filch

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo hold or keep (together)

  3. 3

    To conduct oneself; act

Etymology

From Middle English kippen, from Old Norse kippa (“to pull; snatch”) or Middle Dutch kippen (“to grasp, seize, catch”). Cognate with Norwegian kippe (“to snatch”), Swedish kippa (“to snatch; jerk”); Dutch kippen (“to seize; catch”). Perhaps conflated with some senses of Middle English kepen (“to keep, observe, guard, take possession of, snatch”) (see keep).

noun

  1. 1

    A unit of force equal to 1000 pounds-force (lbf) (4.44822 kilonewtons or 4448.22 newtons); occasionally called the kilopound.

  2. 2

    A unit of weight, used, for example, to calculate shipping charges, equal to half a US ton, or 1000 pounds.

  3. 3

    rareA unit of mass equal to 1000 avoirdupois pounds.

Etymology

1910–15, Americanism, abbreviated from kilo + pound.

noun

  1. 1

    The unit of currency in Laos, divided into 100 att, symbol ₭, abbreviation LAK.

Etymology

1950–55, from Lao ກີບ (kīp).

noun

  1. 1

    A piece of flat wood used to throw the coins in a game of two-up.

    Again Turk placed the pennies on the kip. He took his time, deliberate over the small action, held the kip for a long breathless moment, then jerked his wrist and the pennies were in the air.

    Money was laid on the floor for bets on the heads or tails finish of two pennies tossed high into the air from a small wooden kip.

    Jack discarded a length of wood, two twists of wire, his two-up kip and a spanner.

Etymology

Unknown. Perhaps related to Yorkshire and Lincolnshire dialect kep, to toss up into the air. Or else, perhaps related to German Kippe (“stub”).

noun

  1. 1

    A basic skill or maneuver in artistic gymnastics on the uneven bars, parallel bars, high bar and still rings used, for example, as a way of mounting the bar in a front support position, or achieving a handstand from a hanging position. In its basic form, the legs are swung forward and upward by bending the hips, then suddenly down again, which gives the upward impulse to the body.

  2. 2

    A sharp-pointed hill; a projecting point, as on a hill.

Etymology

From kip (“sleep, lie down”).

verb

  1. 1

    To perform the kip maneuver.

Forms

plural
kips
past tense
kipped
past participle
kipped
present participle
kipping
third person singular
kips
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).