Word.ws English Dictionary

kipe

/ˈkaɪp/

kipe noun: an osier basket used for catching fish. Also the alternative spelling of kype.

kipe: an osier basket used for catching fish
Image: Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

kipe (plural kipes)

  1. An osier basket used for catching fish.
    • The completed kipe looks like a crinoline made for a giantess; from the slender waist the skirts swell to a diameter of eight feet at the hem.
    • The kipe is only the mouth to the fisherman's elaborate trap and is fixed so that it faces up-river.1947, Brian Waters, Severn Tide, J. M. Dent, page 149

Verb

kipe (third-person singular simple present kipes, present participle kiping, simple past and past participle kiped)

  1. (slang) To steal.
    • Johnny imagines all manner of chrome gadgetry that he could kipe and give to his father to jazz up his ’fifty-six Ford Vicky ragtop.1987 [1984], James Ellroy, chapter 22, in Because the Night, New York: Avon, →ISBN, page 189

Also used as

kipe is also the alternative spelling of kype.

Synonyms of kipe

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of kipe

Forms of kipe

Noun
pluralkipes
alternative formkype
Verb
third-person singular presentkipes
present participlekiping
past participlekiped
pastkiped
alternative formkipp
alternative formkypp

Origin of kipe

From Middle English kipe, kype, from Old English cȳpe, cȳpa (“basket”), from Proto-Germanic *kipǭ, *kippǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *gey- (“to bend, twist”). Akin to Middle Low German kīpe ("basket"; > German Low German Kiep, Kiepke (“basket”), German Kiepe (“carrying basket”)), Norwegian kaup (“wooden box; crate”).

Perhaps from dialectal kip (“to snatch”).

Questions about kipe

What does kipe mean?
Kipe means an osier basket used for catching fish.
What part of speech is kipe?
Kipe can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce kipe?
Kipe is pronounced /ˈkaɪp/.
What is the plural of kipe?
The plural of kipe is kipes.

Words near kipe in the dictionary

  1. kipas
  2. Kipchak
  3. Kipchaks
  4. Kipczak
  5. Kipczaks
  6. kipe
  7. kiped
  8. Kiper
  9. Kipers
  10. kipes
  11. Kipevu

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kipe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-kipe.wav.

Cite this entry: “kipe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kipe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.