blip
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /blɪp/
rhymes: -ɪp
Forms: form: blips
Etymology: Onomatopoeic.
Senses: examples: text: When the blip began to move up the oscilloscope screen, they followed again.
ref: 1984 August, Frederick [McCarthy] Forsyth, The Fourth Protocol, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN:
text: At 6:45 pm, the chief officer saw a blip on the radar, approximately seven nautical miles away.
ref: 2004, Asaf Degani, “The Grounding of the Royal Majesty”, in Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces beyond 2001, New York, N.Y.; Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 111:
text: Due to the fact that she’d explored over 30% of the forest enemies were now displayed as blips on her map.
ref: 2020 February 14, Black Lyte [pseudonym], “A Gift of Savagery”, in Don’t F*ck with the Healer! (Vanta Fantasies; 2), ASIN B084TS14PL:
topics: business
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
electronics
energy
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: A small dot registered on electronic equipment, such as a radar or oscilloscope screen.
examples: text: Blip..Blip..Blip..Blip / There was that annoying noise again. Anger entered my subconscious as the dream came to an abrupt end.
ref: 2000, Ken Norton, Marshall Terrill, Mike Fitzgerald, “Prologue”, in Going the Distance, Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, →ISBN, page 2:
text: The most popular event is Joel's computer-based biofeedback game. […] The goal is to move the balloons skyward while avoiding the rockets that the computer shoots toward the balloons. You dodge the rockets by consciously adjusting your muscle tone between relaxation and tension. […] The little "blip" sound that happens when a balloon is shot down becomes a duet with the player. "Blip" "Damn!" "Blip" "Damn!" "Blip" "Damn!"
ref: 2007, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets, 4th edition, Berkeley, Calif.: Blue Snake Books, →ISBN, page 39:
glosses: A short sound of a single pitch, usually electronically generated.
examples: text: There's a chance this is just a viral blip, an intermittent spike of low-level virus that just happens in people on successful HIV treatment.
ref: 2003, Brett Grodeck, The First Year—HIV: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed (First Year Series), New York, N.Y.: Marlowe, →ISBN:
text: As a cell moves through the aperture it causes a blip (a brief change) in the voltage when the nonconductive cell briefly displaces the conductive medium.
ref: 2003, Dany Spencer Adams, Lab Math: A Handbook of Measurements, Calculations, and Other Quantitative Skills for Use at the Bench, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, →ISBN:
text: Barack Obama had become exasperated by the propensity of the party establishment to panic at every psephological blip.
ref: 2010 February 28, Gary Younge, “The Tea Party is a dynamic force, but it is still unruly and incoherent”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2016:
text: […] and therefore it’s too soon to say if the supposed “long peace” we’ve been enjoying since the end of the second world war is a blip or a sustained trend.
ref: 2021 November 7, Laura Spinney, “Can history teach us anything about the future of war – and peace?”, in The Guardian:
glosses: A brief and usually minor aberration or deviation from what is expected or normal.
examples: text: When a participant has full access permissions to a wave, he or she can change the contents of all blips and reply within or after blips.
ref: 2010, Gina Trapani, Adam Pash, The Complete Guide to Google Wave, page 51:
text: Although the wiki-like editing capabilities of Google Wave represent a valuable feature, there is some debate about whether participants should edit other participants' blips or their own blips.
ref: 2010, Andres Ferrate, Google Wave: Up and Running, page 87:
glosses: An individual message or document in the Google Wave software framework.
Derived terms: blip driver
blippy
blipster
blipvert