Other forms: beeps, beeping
A beep is a short high sound made by a machine. The microwave beeped, a beep at the checkout, wait for the beep.
It is the standard sound of confirmation and of complaint in every device that has one, and after the beep is what an answering machine says. As a verb it works both ways: the machine beeps, and you beep a car horn at somebody. Beeped out means a word replaced by a tone in broadcasting. Note beeper, an old American word for a pager.
1nounbeepA short high sound made by a machine.
“There is a beep every thirty seconds and nobody knows why.”
2verbnoteTo make or sound a short high note.
“Somebody beeped at him for stopping at an amber light.”
beep is a short sound.
Beep is imitative, first recorded in the 1920s of a motor horn. It is one of a family of coined sound words — bleep, blip, boop — most of which arrived with the machines that made the noises.
imitative of the sound.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sounds & Noises