drip

• IPA^(key): /dɹɪp/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪp

From Middle English drippen, druppen, from Old English dryppan, from Proto-Germanic *drupjaną (“to fall in drops, drip”), from Proto-Germanic *drupô (“drop”). Akin to West Frisian drippe (“to drip”), Dutch druipen, druppelen (“to drip”), German Low German drüppen (“to drip”), German tropfen, tröpfeln (“to drip”), Norwegian Bokmål dryppe, Norwegian Nynorsk drypa (“to drip”).

drip (third-person singular simple present drips, present participle dripping, simple past and past participle dripped)

1. (intransitive) To fall one drop at a time.

   Listening to the tap next door drip all night drove me mad!

2. (intransitive) To leak slowly.

   Does the sink drip, or have I just spilt water over the floor?

3. (transitive) To let fall in drops.

   After putting oil on the side of the salad, the chef should drip a little vinegar in the oil.

   My broken pen dripped ink onto the table.

   • c. 1726, Alexander Pope (probable author), The Lamentation of Glumdalclitch

     Which from the thatch drips fast a shower of rain.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

4. (intransitive, usually with with) To have a superabundance of valuable things.

   The Old Hall simply drips with masterpieces of the Flemish painters.

   The duchess was dripping with jewels.

5. (intransitive, of the weather) To rain lightly.

   The weather isn't so bad. I mean, it's dripping, but you're not going to get so wet.

6. (intransitive) To be wet, to be soaked.
7. (UK, naval slang, intransitive) To whine or complain consistently; to grumble.
   • 1995, Sue Innes, Making it work: women, change and challenge in the 1990s, page 21:

     The Women's Royal Naval Service was integrated with the Royal Navy in November 1993. […] Men interviewed by Public Eye (April, 1994) said they should 'stop dripping about it' and that women should learn to 'take it like a man […]

   • 2012, I. H. Milburn, Falklands War - Get STUFT:

     The government had been slowly running down the Royal Navy Organisation to save money on various peoples' budgets, so now we had to sub-contract ships to go to war! So stop dripping and "make it so", all those admirals can't be wrong!

From Middle English drippe, from the verb (see above). Compare West Frisian drip (“drip”), Dutch drup (“drip”), Danish dryp (“drip”).

(style, swagger): Compare the verb sense "to have a superabundance of valuable things".

Water dripping from the end of a faucet.

drip (countable and uncountable, plural drips)

1. A drop of a liquid.

   I put a drip of vanilla extract in my hot cocoa.

2. A falling or letting fall in drops; act of dripping.
   • 1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: Printed for John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LXXXVI:

     the light drip of the suspended oar

3. (medicine) An apparatus that slowly releases a liquid, especially one that intravenously releases drugs into a patient's bloodstream.

   He's not doing so well. The doctors have put him on a drip.

4. (colloquial, derogatory) A limp, ineffectual, or uninteresting person.

   He couldn't even summon up the courage to ask her name... what a drip!

   • 1994, Richard Curtis, Four Weddings and a Funeral, spoken by Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman):

     Because most of the blokes I fancy think l'm stupid and pointless—and, so, they just bonk me and then leave me. And the kind of blokes that do fancy me, I think are drips. I can't even be bothered to bonk them. Which does sort of leave me a bit nowhere.

5. (architecture) That part of a cornice, sill course, or other horizontal member, which projects beyond the rest, and has a section designed to throw off rainwater.
6. (slang, uncountable) Style; swagger; fashionable and/or expensive clothing.

   His drip is looking fine, especially the Supreme t-shirt.

   • 2019, Diego Pedraza, "Dragon Fashion", Deadline (Middle College High School, Stockton, CA), Volume 5, Issue 5, page 4:

     Hailey decided to show off her drip with a soft, white fluff jacket […]

   • 2020 December, “Inside The Winter Chic”, in Brown Sugar Box, page 3:

     The cold weather can't stop your drip.

   • 2021 June, “Handpicked Section”, in Syzygy Magazine, page 16:

     Staying true to their purpose, all this exciting drip will be available at the most pocket-friendly prices.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:drip.

Acronym.

drip

1. (finance) A dividend reinvestment program; a type of financial investing.

Borrowed from English drip.

• IPA^(key): /drip/

drip m

1. (slang) drip (style, swagger, fashionable and/or expensive clothing)

drip c

1. (slang) drip (style, swagger, fashionable and/or expensive clothing)

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