Word: dip Part of Speech: verb Etymology: From Middle English dippen, from Old English dyppan, from Proto-West Germanic *duppjan, from Proto-Germanic *dupjaną; see *daupijaną (“to dip”). Related to deep. Pronunciation: /dɪp/ 1. To lower into a liquid. Labels: transitive Example: Dip your biscuit into your tea. Example: He dipped the end of a towel in cold water and with it began to flick him on the face, his wife all the while holding her face between her hands and sobbing in a way that was heart breaking to hear. 2. To immerse oneself; to become plunged in a liquid; to sink. Labels: intransitive Example: The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out. 3. (of a value or rate) To decrease slightly. Labels: intransitive 4. To lower a light's beam. Labels: transitive Example: Dip your lights as you meet an oncoming car. Example: The engine's three headlights lit the way clearly, and when a train approached in the other direction, Driver Wegg dipped his lights; the other driver politely replying by doing the same. 5. To lower (a flag), particularly a national ensign, to a partially hoisted position in order to render or to return a salute. While lowered, the flag is said to be “at the dip.” A flag being carried on a staff may be dipped by leaning it forward at an approximate angle of 45 degrees. Labels: transitive Example: The sailor rushed to the flag hoist to dip the flag in return. 6. To treat cattle or sheep by immersion in chemical solution. Labels: transitive Example: The farmer is going to dip the cattle today. 7. To use a dip stick to check oil level in an engine. Labels: transitive 8. To consume snuff by placing a pinch behind the lip or under the tongue in order to absorb the desired chemical constituents. Example: Near-synonym: pack a lip Example: He started dipping years ago. 9. To immerse for baptism. Labels: transitive Example: new dipt Sectaries Example: […] during the reigns of King James and King Charles I, there were but very few children dipped in the font. 10. To wet, as if by immersing; to moisten. Labels: transitive Example: A cold shuddering dew / Dips me all o'er. 11. To plunge or engage thoroughly in any affair. Labels: intransitive Example: He was […] dipt in the rebellion of the Commons. 12. To take out, by dipping a dipper, ladle, or other receptacle, into a fluid and removing a part; often with out. Labels: transitive Example: to dip water from a boiler; to dip out water 13. To perform the action of plunging a dipper, ladle. etc. into a liquid or soft substance and removing a part. Labels: intransitive Example: Whoever dips too deep will find death in the pot. 14. To engage as a pledge; to mortgage. Labels: transitive Example: Live on the use and never dip thy lands. Example: Aura. Have you a clear title to the thing you would sell? That heart of your's, I warrant, has been mortgaged over and over. Mod. Humph! it has been a little dipped; but I have always honourably redeemed it, and was as free as air, till I beheld those eyes. 15. To perform (a bow or curtsey) by inclining the body. Labels: transitive 16. To sink, drop, or slope downwards. Labels: intransitive Example: The sun is dipping over the now dry and clear Cornish landscape, and is a conclusion to a good day. 17. To incline downward from the plane of the horizon. Labels: intransitive Example: Strata of rock dip. Example: The tunnel dips approximately 15 metres below Regents Canal and has a rising gradient at its northern end of 1-in-107. 18. To perform a dip dance move (often phrased with the leader as the subject noun and the follower as the subject noun being dipped) Labels: transitive 19. To briefly lower the body by bending the knees while keeping the body in an upright position, usually in rhythm, as when singing or dancing. Labels: transitive 20. To leave; to quit or abandon. Labels: colloquial, intransitive Example: When the time came, he dipped. Example: Twelve people worked on the project, but by the end, most of them had dipped on the real work. 21. To miss out on seeing a sought after bird. Labels: colloquial Example: I assured him that I'd been birding long enough to know that there were no guarantees with birds and I wouldn't have held it against him if I'd dipped.