bleep

English

Etymology

Onomatopoeic.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbliːp/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iːp

Noun

bleep (countable and uncountable, plural bleeps)

A bleep, as used in the bleep censor.

1. A brief high-pitched sound, as from some electronic device.
3. (euphemistic) Something named by an explicit noun in the original, unedited version of the containing sentence.

   What the bleep are you doing?

4. (music, slang, uncountable) A broad genre of electronic music with goth and industrial influences, as opposed to traditional gothic rock.
   • 2005, Jennie Kermode, “What is gothic?”, in alt.gothic (Usenet):

     See, there are a huge number of people in this city who look like goths and talk the talk and claim to enjoy much of the same music I do, so it confuses me somewhat that the clubs all play bleep. I would have thought there would be enough people to make something else work.

   • 2005, oldgoth, “Theaving^[sic] Goths”, in uk.people.gothic (Usenet):

     A number of nights now steer away from the EBM of yesteryear. The scene is alive and kicking with plenty of new bands that aren't reliant on synths. All you have to do is look. At InsanitoriuM we have a large, young, crowd that would up and leave if we started playing bleep at them, and we're not alone.

5. (medicine, UK) A pager, usually one held by a doctor or nurse in a hospital.

Derived terms

• bleep test

Translations

high-pitched sound

• Czech: pípnutí n, pípání, zapípání
• Finnish: piippaus (fi)
• French: bip (fr)
• German: Pieps (de) m
• Norwegian: pip n
• Portuguese: pi (pt) m
• Romanian: bip n
• Spanish: pip
• Turkish: bip (tr)

Verb

bleep (third-person singular simple present bleeps, present participle bleeping, simple past and past participle bleeped)

1. (intransitive) To emit one or more bleeps.

   The robot bleeped to acknowledge its new instructions.

   • 2024 January 24, Pip Dunn, “Adventure on a GA Class 20 Aventra”, in RAIL, number 1001, page 52:

     The basic toilet has quite a heavy door, which then bleeps to remind you to lock it - with a nice, peace of mind, manual lock.

2. (transitive) To edit out inappropriate spoken language in a broadcast by replacing offending words with bleeps.

   Synonym: blip

3. (medicine, UK) To contact someone by pager.

   If his condition gets any worse, please bleep the registrar on call.

Derived terms

• bleepable
• bleeper
• bleep out
• bleepy
• bullbleep
• unbleeped

 

Translations

to emit high-pitched sound

• Czech: pípat impf, zapípat pf
• Finnish: piipata (fi)
• German: piepen (de), piepsen (de)
• Turkish: biplemek (tr), bip bip yapmak (tr),

to edit out inappropriate spoken language in a broadcast by replacing offending words with bleeps

• Russian: запикивать (ru) impf (zapikivatʹ), запикать (ru) pf (zapikatʹ)

Anagrams

• plebe