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pipe cleaner

noun
  1. a short length of twisted flexible wires covered with tufted fabric, used to clean the stem of a smoker's pipe and for various handicrafts.
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Origin of pipe cleaner

First recorded in 1865–70
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for pipe cleaner

Historical Examples

  • The first pipe-cleaner man was shinnying up the power cable.

    Makers

    Cory Doctorow

  • Improvising tweezers from a pipe-cleaner, he picked this up and looked at it.

    Murder in the Gunroom

    Henry Beam Piper

  • And so when the officious flapper presented him with a white feather he had no use for it except as a pipe-cleaner.

  • There, on the ground, was a sharpened black tooth, pierced by a piece of pipe-cleaner wire.

  • A pipe-cleaner man happened upon a shard after a moment and hugged it to his chest, then toddled back into the box with it.

    Makers

    Cory Doctorow

British Dictionary definitions for pipe cleaner

pipe cleaner

noun
  1. a short length of thin wires twisted so as to hold tiny tufts of yarn: used to clean the stem of a tobacco pipe
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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