pipe cleaner

noun

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.

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 of pipe cleaner

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.
Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914
Various
There, on the ground, was a sharpened black tooth, pierced by a piece of pipe-cleaner wire.
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Cory Doctorow
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

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

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