Other forms: sipping, sips, siping, sipped
To sip is to drink in tiny careful mouthfuls. Sip your tea, sip at it, sipping slowly.
It implies heat, caution or savouring — you sip something too hot, too strong or too good to gulp. As a noun a sip is one such mouthful: take a sip, a sip of water. Sip at is used when the drinking is reluctant or prolonged. Note gulp and swig, which are the opposites; and that sip is one of a family of quiet drinking words with sup and sup up.
1verbsipTo drink in tiny careful mouthfuls.
“She sipped it for about half an hour and left most of it.”
2nountinyA tiny mouthful of drink.
“He took one sip and put the glass down.”
sip is a small drink.
Middle English sippen is probably a modification of sup, from an Old English verb meaning to drink. The i gives the smaller action, which English does elsewhere too — compare slap and slip.
Middle English
sippen
English, today
sip
Middle English sippen, of uncertain origin. Compare with Low German sippen (“to sip”). Possibly from a variant of Middle English suppen (“to drink, sip”) (see sup) or perhaps from Old English sipian, sypian (“to take in moisture, soak, macerate”), from Proto-Germanic sipōną (“to drip, trickle”), from Proto-Indo-European seyb- (“to pour out, trickle, leak out”). Compare also Old High German supfen (“to drink, sip”), from Proto-Germanic sūpaną (“to sip, intake”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Everyday Verbs