Other forms: pips
A pip is a small hard seed inside an apple, orange or grape. Spit out the pips, an apple pip, seedless has no pips.
Pips are what breeders remove to make seedless varieties. The word also means the small spots on dice and playing cards, and the stars on a British army officer's uniform: three pips. The pips on the radio are the six short tones marking the hour. Note pip somebody at the post, meaning to beat them at the very last moment; and pipped, which is the British word for narrowly losing.
1nounpipA small hard seed inside a fruit.
“She picked the pips out of her slice of orange before eating it.”
Patternapple / grape / lemon pips · spit out the pips · full of pips · pip sth (remove the pips)
synonyms: seed
2nounspotA small spot or short tone.
“The pips go at exactly the hour and always have.”
pip is a seed, spot or tone.
Also accepted in games: seed
PIP → the same from both ends, small and round
Spell it forwards or backwards, it is the same small word: the little seed you spit out of an orange.
Pip is a shortening of pippin, an apple grown from seed. The dice spots and the radio tones were named separately, and the three senses have collided into one spelling without any relation.
Latin
pipita
Middle Dutch
pip
Middle English
pippe
English, today
pip
From Middle English pippe, from Middle Dutch pip, from post-classical Latin pipita, from Latin pītuīta (“mucus, phlegm, head cold”). a doublet of pituita.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA