pipe down

British  

verb

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

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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.

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Example Sentences

Another microbiologist and senior doctor, Christine Peters, said she was advised by a senior colleague to "pipe down" or she would find things "hard" professionally.

From BBC • Jan. 24, 2026

Payton walked over to the boo birds and told them to pipe down and to be respectful around the young quarterback’s family.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 31, 2025

Bongino, instead of replying with statistics or facts, instead told Rivera to "take a Valium" and "pipe down."

From Salon • Apr. 15, 2021

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

Mr. Boatwright laughed so much he had to put his pipe down.

From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman

Related Words

• cut off
• gag
• muffle
• mute
• muzzle
• quash
• quell
• squelch
• stifle
• subdue
• suppress