cheep

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English

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Etymology

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Onomatopoeic.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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cheep (third-person singular simple present cheeps, present participle cheeping, simple past and past participle cheeped)

  1. Of a small bird, to make short, high-pitched sounds.
    • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm [], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:
      [] a brood of ducklings, which had lost their mother, filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side []
  2. To express in a chirping tone.
    • 1847, Tennyson, “O Swallow, Swallow, flying South”, in The Princess[1], lines 7–9:
      O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light / Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, / And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

Translations

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Noun

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cheep (plural cheeps)

  1. A short, high-pitched sound made by a small bird.
  2. A similar-sounding short high-pitched sound
    • December 15 2022, Samanth Subramanian, “Dismantling Sellafield: the epic task of shutting down a nuclear site”, in The Guardian[2]:
      The radiation trackers clipped to our protective overalls let off soft cheeps, their frequency varying as radioactivity levels changed around us.

Interjection

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cheep

  1. The short, high-pitched sound made by a small bird.

Translations

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Derived terms

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