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

See Examples For:

pipe down

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

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

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

Which provoked Jerry G., who was constantly having to turn half-around and bark “Shhh!” or order them, in his puritanical Okie voice, to “please pipe down back there, will you?”

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols

Related Words

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