lip

Picture dictionary
skull brain eye lip nose mouth chin jaw ear temple neck
Click on labels in the image.

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 West Frisian lippe (“lip”), Dutch lip (“lip”), German Lippe and Lefze (“lip”), Swedish läpp (“lip”), Norwegian leppe (“lip”), Danish læbe (“lip”), Latin labium (“lip”).

• enPR: lĭp, IPA^(key): /lɪp/
• Rhymes: -ɪp

• Audio (US):

  (file)

lip (countable and uncountable, plural lips)

2. (countable) Either of the two fleshy protrusions around the opening of the mouth.

   Synonym: labium

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Job 15:6, column 1:

     […] thine owne lippes teſtifie againſt thee.

3. (countable) A part of the body that resembles a lip, such as the edge of a wound or the labia.

   Synonym: labium

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, pages 67–68:

     […] I twiſted my thighs, ſqueezed, and compreſs’d the lips of that virgin-ſlit […]

4. (by extension, countable) The projecting rim of an open container or a bell, etc.; a short open spout.

   Synonyms: edge, rim, spout

   • 2018, Sally Rooney, “Six Months Later (July 2013)”, in Normal People:

     The cork sails over the garden wall and lands somewhere no one can see it. A crest of white spills over the lip of the bottle and Niall pours the wine into Elaine's glass.

5. (slang, uncountable) Backtalk; verbal impertinence.

   Synonyms: backchat, cheek (informal), impudence, rudeness, insolence

   Don’t give me any lip!

   • 2008 May 1, Damon Beesley, Iain Morris, The Inbetweeners, I:ii: “w:Bunk Off”,:

     Kevin Sutherland: I've had enough of your lip!

   • 1977, Larry Mitchell, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, Calamus Books; republished New York: Nightboat Books, 2020, →ISBN, page 97:

     Loose Tomato grew up tough. No one ever suspected that he was scared every time he walked down the street. Any lip and they got their ass kicked.

6. The edge of a high spot of land.
   • 1894, David Livingstone, “Chapter VII”, in A Popular Account of Dr Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries:

     We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls. On reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us.

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “Passion”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC, part II, page 311:

     They toiled forward along a tiny path on the river’s lip. Suddenly it vanished. The bank was sheer red solid clay in front of them, sloping straight into the river.

   • 1999, Harish Kapadia, “Ascents in the Panch Chuli Group”, in Across Peaks & Passes in Kumaun Himalaya, New Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 136:

     Looking to the east we could see Api and the mountains of west Nepal, shapely snow peaks in the distance, while in the immediate foreground, much lower but still dramatic, were the peaks of Panch Chuli IV and V (III was hidden by the lip of a huge cornice), Telkot and Nagling, all of them unclimbed, all steep and challenging.

7. The sharp cutting edge on the end of an auger.
8. (botany) One of the two opposite divisions of a labiate corolla.
9. (botany) A distinctive lower-appearing of the three true petals of an orchid.
10. (zoology) One of the edges of the aperture of a univalve shell.
11. (music, colloquial) Embouchure: the condition or strength of a wind instrumentalist's lips.
12. (colloquial) Short for lipstick.

    I put on some red lip and a casual print dress.

• (fleshy protrusion): philtrum, Cupid's bow, vermilion, commissure

lip (third-person singular simple present lips, present participle lipping, simple past and past participle lipped)

1. (transitive) To touch or grasp with the lips; to kiss; to lap the lips against (something).
   • c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene v], page 348, column 1:

     […] a hand that Kings / Haue lipt, and trembled kiſſing.

   • 1826 March, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, “Josephine”, in The New Monthly Magazine, volume 16, number 63, page 308:

     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;

   • 1901, Robert W. Chambers, chapter 9, in Cardigan‎^[1], New York: Harper, published 1902, page 130:

     Once […] at dawn, I heard a bull-moose lipping tree-buds, and lay still in my blanket while the huge beast wandered past, crack! crash! and slop! slop!through the creek […]

   • 1929, William Faulkner, “June Second 1910”, in The Sound and the Fury‎^[2], New York: Vintage, published 1956, page 144:

     […] in a quick swirl the trout lipped a fly beneath the surface with that sort of gigantic delicacy of an elephant picking up a peanut.

2. (transitive, figurative) (of something inanimate) To touch lightly.
   • 1971, Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man‎^[3], New York: Viking, page 405:

     He moved the boat onward very slowly, lipping the glossy surface delicately with the light oars.

3. (intransitive, transitive) To wash against a surface, lap.
   • 1898, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 10, in The Tragedy of the Korosko‎^[4], London: Smith, Elder & Co., page 324:

     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.

   • 1922, John Masefield, The Dream‎^[5], London: Heinemann, page 9:

     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;

   • 2008, Julie Czerneda, Riders of the Storm‎^[6], New York: Daw Books, Interlude, page 406:

     The mist that lipped against the wall behind him hung overhead like a ceiling, hiding any stars.

4. (intransitive) To rise or flow up to or over the edge of something.
   • 1903, Robert Barr, Over the Border‎^[7], London: Isbister, Book 4, Chapter 7, p. 375:

     Below, the swollen Eden, lipping full from bank to bank, rolled yellow and surly to the sea.

   • 1911, Charles G. D. Roberts, “Mothers of the North”, in Neighbors Unknown‎^[8], U.S. edition, New York: Macmillan, page 256:

     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.

   • 1939 April 14, John Steinbeck, chapter 22, in The Grapes of Wrath, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC; Compass Books edition, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, 1967, →OCLC, page 311:
   • 1973, Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills‎^[9], New York: William Morrow, Book I, Chapter 3, p. 26:

     Above the spring the little statue of the god Myrddin, he of the winged spaces of the air, stared from between the ferns. Beneath his cracked wooden feet the water bubbled and dripped into the stone basin, lipping over into the grass below.

5. (transitive) To form the rim, edge or margin of something.
   • 1894, Fiona Macleod, chapter 4, in Pharais‎^[10], Derby, page 88:

     […] 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.

   • 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe, Chapter 9, p. 242,^[11]

     It was a tiny stone house whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the feet of black soldiers marching home.

   • 1924, James Oliver Curwood, chapter 3, in A Gentleman of Courage‎^[12], New York: Cosmopolitan, page 36:

     The woman had slipped to the very edge of the rock—the edge that lipped the fury of the Pit. She was half over. And she was slipping—slipping....

6. (transitive) To utter verbally.
   • 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: […] T[homas] Miller, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 48, lines 964–965:

     Salt tears were coming, when I heard my name / Most fondly lipp’d […]

7. (transitive) To simulate speech by moving the lips without making any sound; to mouth.
   • 1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter XIII, in The Woodlanders […], volume III, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 274:

     “Ah, I thought my memory didn’t deceive me!” he lipped silently.

   • 1980, Cyril Dabydeen, “Mammita’s Garden Cove”, in Caribbean New Wave: Contemporary Short Stories‎^[13], London: Heinemann, published 1990, page 65:

     And as he read, lipping the words, he thought of his own boyhood […]

8. (sports) To make a golf ball hit the lip of the cup, without dropping in.
   • 1910 March, Fred M. White, “A Record Round”, in The Windsor Magazine:

     “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.”

   • 1999, J. M. Gregson, chapter 9, in Malice Aforethough‎^[14], Sutton: Severn House, page 112:

     Lambert just missed his three; his putt lipped the hole before finishing two feet past it.

9. (transitive, music) To change the sound of (a musical note played on a wind instrument) by moving or tensing the lips.

• LPI, PIL

From Dutch lip, from Middle Dutch leppe, with influence of Middle Low German lippe, from Old Dutch leppa, from Proto-West Germanic *lippjō.

• IPA^(key): /ləp/

• Audio:

  (file)

lip (plural lippe, diminutive lippie)

1. lip (part of the mouth)

   Die slang het in my lip gebyt! ― The snake has bitten me in my lip!

• IPA^(key): [ˈlɪp]

lip

1. genitive plural of lípa

From Middle Dutch leppe, with influence of Middle Low German lippe, from Old Dutch leppa, from Proto-West Germanic *lippjō.

• IPA^(key): /lɪp/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: lip
• Rhymes: -ɪp

lip f (plural lippen, diminutive lipje n)

1. lip (part of the mouth)

   Ze likte haar lippen na het eten van het heerlijke dessert.

   She licked her lips after eating the delicious dessert.

   De zoen op haar lippen bracht een glimlach op haar gezicht.

   The kiss on her lips brought a smile to her face.

2. lip (of a container)

   De fles had een speciale rubberen lip om morsen te voorkomen.

   The bottle had a special rubber lip to prevent spills.

   Het blikje had een metalen lipje waarmee je het gemakkelijk kon openen.

   The can had a metal tab that made it easy to open.

• Afrikaans: lip
• Negerhollands: lip, lepp
• → Papiamentu: lep, lip, leep

• pil

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

lip ? (plural lips)

1. lip

For pronunciation and definitions of lip – see 逐 (“to chase; to pursue; gradually; one by one; etc.”). (This term is the pe̍h-ōe-jī form of 逐).

From Proto-Slavic *lě̑pъ.

• IPA^(key): /lip/, [lʲip]

lip m inan (diminutive lipk)

1. glue, birdlime

• lipaś

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

lip

1. second-person singular imperative of lipaś

• lipaj

• Muka, Arnošt (1921, 1928) “lip”, in Słownik dolnoserbskeje rěcy a jeje narěcow (in German), St. Petersburg, Prague: ОРЯС РАН, ČAVU; Reprinted Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag, 2008
• Starosta, Manfred (1999) “lip”, in Dolnoserbsko-nimski słownik / Niedersorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (in German), Bautzen: Domowina-Verlag

• IPA^(key): /ˈlip/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ip
• Syllabification: lip

lip f

1. genitive plural of lipa

• lȇp (Ekavian)
• lijȇp (Ijekavian)

Inherited from Proto-Slavic *lěpъ.

lip (Cyrillic spelling лип)

1. (Chakavian, Ikavian) nice, pretty
   • 1375, N.N., Muka svete Margarite (transribed from Glagolitic original):

     Pasite se, ovce mile,
     sve ste lipe, sve ste bile

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1501, Marko Marulić, Judita:

     Tad se usčudiše svi, vidiv Juditu,
     toko lipa biše i u takovu svitu.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1759, Antun Kanižlić, Sveta Rožalija:

     Ovog zaručnika, lipa, mila, srićna,
     imati jest dika, srića, radost vična.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

From English leaf.

lip

1. leaf
   • 1989, Buk Baibel long Tok Pisin, Port Moresby: Bible Society of Papua New Guinea, Jenesis 1:30:

     Tasol mi givim ol grinpela lip na gras samting olsem kaikai bilong olgeta bikpela na liklik animal na bilong olgeta pisin.” Orait ol dispela samting i kamap olsem God i tok.

     →New International Version translation