lip

From Middle English lippe, from Old English lippe, lippa (“lip”), from Proto-Germanic *lipjô (“lip”), 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”), Latin labium (“lip”).

• enPR: lĭp, IPA^(key): /lɪp/

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• Rhymes: -ɪp

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lip (countable and uncountable, plural lips)

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

   Synonym: labium

   • Bible, Jeb. xv. 6

     Thine own lips testify against thee.

2. (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], Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: Printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], OCLC 731622352:

     I twisted my thighs, squeezed, and compressed the lips of that virgin slit

3. (by extension, countable) The projecting rim of an open container; a short open spout.

   Synonyms: edge, rim, spout

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

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

   Don’t give me any lip!

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

     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.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 12

     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.

6. The sharp cutting edge on the end of an auger.
7. (botany) One of the two opposite divisions of a labiate corolla.
8. (botany) The distinctive petal of the Orchis family.
9. (zoology) One of the edges of the aperture of a univalve shell.
10. (music, colloquial) Embouchure: the condition or strength of a wind instrumentalist's lips.

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, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Scene 5,

     […] a hand that kings

     Have lipp’d and trembled kissing.

   • 1826, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, “Josephine” in The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 16, No. 63, March 1826, p. 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, Cardigan, New York: Harper, 1902, Chapter 9, p. 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, The Sound and the Fury, New York: Vintage, 1956, “June Second 1910,” p. 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, figuratively) (of something inanimate) To touch lightly.
   • 1971, Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man, New York: Viking, p. 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, The Tragedy of the Korosko, London: Smith, Elder & Co., Chapter 10, p. 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, London: Heinemann, p. 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, New York: Daw Books, Interlude, p. 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, 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, Neighbors Unknown, U.S. edition, New York: Macmillan, “Mothers of the North,” p. 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, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Viking, Chapter Twenty-Two, p. 410,

     The sun lipped over the mountain by now, shone on the corrugated-iron roofs of the five sanitary units, shone on the gray tents and on the swept ground of the streets between the tents.

   • 1973, Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills, 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, Pharais, Derby, Chapter 4, p. 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,

     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, A Gentleman of Courage, New York: Cosmopolitan, Chapter 3, p. 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, Endymion, London: Taylor & Hessey, Book I, lines 964-965, p. 48,

     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.
   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, Chapter 46,

     “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, London: Heinemann, 1990, p. 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, Fred M. White, “A Record Round,” The Windsor Magazine, March 1910,

     “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, Malice Aforethough, Sutton: Severn House, Chapter Nine, p. 112,

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

• LPI

From Middle Low German lippe, from Old Dutch leppa, from Proto-Germanic *lipjô.

• IPA^(key): /lɪp/
• Rhymes: -ɪp

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lip f (plural lippen, diminutive lipje n)

1. lip (part of the mouth)
2. lip (of a container)

• lipklank
• liplezen
• lippen
• lippendienst
• lippenrood
• lippenstift
• lipvis
• loslippig
• schaamlip
• bovenlip
• onderlip

• pil

lip ? (plural lips)

1. lip

• IPA^(key): /lip/, [lʲip]

lip m (diminutive lipk)

1. glue, birdlime

• lipaś

lip

1. second-person singular imperative of lipaś

• lipaj

lip

1. genitive plural of lipa

• (Ekavian): lȇp
• (Ijekavian): lijȇp

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

   • 1501, Marko Marulić, Judita:

     Tad se usčudiše svi, vidiv Juditu,

     toko lipa biše i u takovu svitu.

   • 1759, Antun Kanižlić, Sveta Rožalija:

     Ovog zaručnika, lipa, mila, srićna,

     imati jest dika, srića, radost vična.

From English leaf

lip

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

     (please add an English translation of this quote)