pipe down, (to)

pipe down, (to)

(To) be quiet. This term comes from the navy, where the boatswain’s signal for “All hands turn in” was sometimes made on a whistle or pipe. By 1900 Dialect Notes included a definition (“to stop talking”). Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson used both forms, “Pipe down!” and “to pipe down,” in their play What Price Glory? (1926).

See also: pipe