Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Synonyms

pipe down

British  

verb

  1. informal (intr, adverb) to stop talking, making noise, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
pipe down Idioms  

  1. Stop talking, be quiet, as in I wish you children would pipe down. This idiom is also used as an imperative, as in Pipe down! We want to listen to the opera. It comes from the navy, where the signal for all hands to turn in was sometimes sounded on a whistle or pipe. By 1900 it had been transferred to more general use.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Leaders cannot just tell their number two to pipe down, because they are voted in by party members.

From BBC • Oct. 11, 2025

Like Indy, kids get dragged around to places they don’t want to go to for reasons that aren’t explained, and when they whine, they’re commanded to pipe down.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 1, 2025

Politico's Rachel Bade caught a rare break in McCarthy's otherwise stony facade when he "visibly shushed his members to pipe down."

From Salon • Feb. 8, 2023

The ploy is quite clear: virtually nobody counts as quite deprived enough to have ambitions for a better world, so everybody should just pipe down.

From The Guardian • Aug. 7, 2019

He hollowed something in their language and everybody began to pipe down just a hair.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.