How Did the Pipe Get Its Name?: Difference between revisions

Now to the etymological investigation. Almost one-third of English’s vocabulary can be traced to the Norman Conquest of 1066, but pipe is not one of those words. Pipe comes from the Vulgar Latin pipa, a tube-shaped musical instrument. “Let us take by way of illustration the various meanings of the word ''pipe''. This word goes back for its origin to the Latin ''pipare'', a verb of imitative origin from the peeping of a bird. From this verb was formed the noun ''pipa'', applied originally to an instrument that made the sound named by the verb, usually a tubular wooden instrument. From this last meaning radiate out the meanings: (1) pipe of an organ; (2) gas-pipe, stove-pipe, etc.; (3) the cell in a bee-hive used by the queen bee; (4) a tube of clay used in smoking, and, by metonymy, ''pipe for pipeful''; (5) a wine measure; (6) ''pipe'' colloquial for ''windpipe''; (7) plural, ''pipes'' for ''bagpipes''; (8) a spool (as of thread), obsolete; (9) various special meanings in hairdressing, in dressmaking, in engineering, and in metallurgy” (George Harley McKnight, ''English Words and Their Background'', 1923). “The musical sense of ''pipa'' passed into all the Romance and Teutonic languages, but it is in English that the other derived senses are by far the most numerous. Fr. ''pipe'' is now little used, except in the sense of tobacco-pipe. This may have developed from the general idea of tube, but I fancy it was originally a witticism, the smoking implement being compared to a musical instrument held in the mouth. Otherwise we could hardy explain the similar use of Ger. ''pfeife'', which never acquired the general meaning of tube and is used only of a flute or whistle and a tobacco-pipe” (Ernest Weekley, ''Words Ancient and Modern'', 1926).  

Henry Bradley (''The Making of English, 2013''): “The two processes, of generalization and specialization, are often illustrated in the history of one and the same word. We have seen how the word ''pipe'', meaning originally a certain instrument of music, developed the general sense of ‘a thing of tubular shape.’ When the smoking of tobacco was introduced, people said that the smoke was drawn through a ''pipe''…” is an explanation accepted on faith, not fact.