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

The noise of the crowd is overwhelming from a cinema seat, even after it's piped down and sound mixed for a documentary.

From BBC

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

From BBC

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

His crews then had to build scaffolding and run flexible piping down to the field.

From Washington Post

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

Related Words

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