Word.ws English Dictionary

pipe off

pipe off verb: to watch (a person or building) for purposes of theft.

Verb

pipe off (third-person singular simple present pipes off, present participle piping off, simple past and past participle piped off)

  1. (dated, slang, transitive) To watch (a person or building) for purposes of theft.
    • To put the matter to further test, on the succeeding night other of their men were instructed to "pipe off" the place still more cautiously. But these too were discovered by Miles's vigilant but bogus police, given chase to, and unmercifully clubbed.1900, Allan Pinkerton, Professional Thieves and the Detective

Forms of pipe off

third-person singular presentpipes off
present participlepiping off
past participlepiped off
pastpiped off

Questions about pipe off

What does pipe off mean?
Pipe off means to watch (a person or building) for purposes of theft.
What part of speech is pipe off?
Pipe off is a verb.
What is the past tense of pipe off?
The past tense of pipe off is piped off.

Words near pipe off in the dictionary

  1. pipe keys
  2. pipe lighter
  3. pipe line
  4. pipe lines
  5. pipe of peace
  6. pipe off
  7. pipe office
  8. pipe offices
  9. pipe one's eye
  10. pipe opal
  11. pipe opals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pipe off (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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