Word.ws English Dictionary

tippy-taps

tippy-taps is the plural of tippy-tap.

tippy-taps is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tippy-tap.

Meaning of tippy-tap

Noun

tippy-tap (plural tippy-taps)

  1. A step that makes a clicking sound.
    • […] she trots through the halls of her mansion jiggling in her frilly dresses and making tippy-taps with her high heels.1991, Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, Picador, →ISBN, page 199, column 2
  2. A light and rapid tap
    • Why do TV news anchors always do that thing at the end of the show when they gather their papers in a neat pile, stand them on end and give them a little double tippy-tap?1997 May 6, Peter Stockland, “Take a seat and ponder the world”, in Calgary Herald, page A17
  3. A gourd or small jerry can filled with water and attached to a piece of wood at ground level, such that stepping on the wood tips the gourd or can to release a stream of water through a small hole.
    • Based in San Luis Obispo, Lifewater focuses all its efforts on the countries of Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, teaching people how to make water safer by building latrines and tippy-taps, a simple gadget used to wash hands with running water.2016 August 23, Doug Thompson, “Couple teach clean water importance in Ethiopia”, in Ventura County Star, page 4A

See all 5 meanings of tippy-tap

Questions about tippy-taps

What is tippy-taps the plural of?
Tippy-taps is the plural of tippy-tap.

Words near tippy-taps in the dictionary

  1. tippy tops
  2. tippy-tap
  3. tippy-tapped
  4. tippy-tapping
  5. tippy-tappy
  6. tippy-taps
  7. tippy-toe
  8. tippy-toes
  9. tippytoe
  10. tippytoed
  11. tippytoeing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tippy-taps (page history and authors); tippy-tap (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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Cite this entry: “tippy-taps.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tippy-taps. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.