Word: lip Part of Speech: verb Etymology: From Middle English lippe, from Old English lippa, lippe (“lip”), from Proto-West Germanic *lippjō (“lip”), from Proto-Germanic *lepô, from Proto-Indo-European *leb- (“to hang loosely, droop, sag”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Lippe (“lip”), West Frisian lippe (“lip”), Dutch lip (“lip”), German Lippe and Lefze (“lip”), Low German Lippe (“lip”), Luxembourgish Lëps (“lip”), Vilamovian łyp (“lip”), Yiddish ליפּ (lip, “lip”), Danish læbe (“lip”), Norwegian Bokmål leppe (“lip”), Norwegian Nynorsk leppa, leppe, lippa, lippe (“lip”), Swedish läpp (“lip”), Latin labium (“lip”). Pronunciation: /lɪp/ 1. To touch or grasp with the lips; to kiss; to lap the lips against (something). Labels: transitive Example: […] a hand that Kings / Haue lipt, and trembled kiſſing. Example: Our love was like the bright snow-flakes, Which melt before you pass, Or the bubble on the wine which breaks Before you lip the glass; 2. To touch lightly. Labels: figuratively, transitive Example: He moved the boat onward very slowly, lipping the glossy surface delicately with the light oars. 3. To wash against a surface, lap. Labels: intransitive, transitive Example: It was very soothing and restful up there on the saloon deck, with no sound but the gentle lipping of the water as it rippled against the sides of the steamer. Example: So on I went, and by my side, it seemed, Paced a great bull, kept from me by a brook Which lipped the grass about it as it streamed Over the flagroots that the grayling shook; 4. To rise or flow up to or over the edge of something. Labels: intransitive Example: Below, the swollen Eden, lipping full from bank to bank, rolled yellow and surly to the sea. Example: The rest of the herd were grouped so close to the water’s edge that from time to time a lazy, leaden-green swell would come lipping up and splash them. 5. To form the rim, edge or margin of something. Labels: transitive Example: […] old Macrae, of Adrfeulan Farm near by, had caused rude steps to be cut in the funnel-like hollow rising sheer up from the sloping ledge that lipped the chasm and reached the summit of the scaur. Example: 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, Chapter 9, p. 242, It was a tiny stone house whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the feet of black soldiers marching home. 6. To utter verbally. Labels: transitive Example: Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name / Most fondly lipp’d […] 7. To simulate speech by moving the lips without making any sound; to mouth. Labels: transitive Example: “Ah, I thought my memory didn’t deceive me!” he lipped silently. Example: And as he read, lipping the words, he thought of his own boyhood […] 8. To make a golf ball hit the lip of the cup, without dropping in. Example: “I shall find the ball to the left of a patch of sword grass near the hole,” he said. “My second will lip the hole, I know it as well as if I could see the whole thing.” Example: Lambert just missed his three; his putt lipped the hole before finishing two feet past it. 9. To change the sound of (a musical note played on a wind instrument) by moving or tensing the lips. Labels: transitive