beep
Pluralbeeps
Pluralbeeps
- 1A short tone produced electronically by a device or machine.
A single beep confirmed that the card had been accepted.
The heart monitor emitted a steady beep every few seconds.
Similarbleep
Note
Bleep is its close twin, and for a device's signal the two can usually trade places. Bleep is also the name of the tone that covers obscene words in broadcasts, and that is the joke behind the euphemistic verb. Beep counts easily, so devices give a single beep, a steady beep or three short beeps.
- 2To make, or cause something to make, a short electronic tone.
Drivers beep their horns when the light finally turns green.
The microwave beeped to signal that the cycle was done.
Note
The verb works both ways. Used without an object, the device does the beeping: the microwave beeped. With an object, someone beeps something, usually a horn, so motorists stuck in a jam start beeping their horns. Honk, hoot and toot compete with it for horns, but beep is the one that also suits appliances and electronic devices.
- 3The sound made by a car's horn, or any similar short blast.
An angry beep warned the jaywalker to step back onto the curb.
She tapped the wheel and let out a short beep at the slow truck.
Similarhonk, toot, hoot, blast
Note
The word imitates the noise it names. Because it is onomatopoeic, it moves easily from a horn to the electronic tone and on to pagers and phones. In this sense it usually means a deliberate signal from a driver, and it often comes with an adjective: a short beep, a quick beep, an angry beep.
- 4To contact someone by sending a message to their pager.
Nurses beep the surgeon whenever an emergency arrives.
He beeped his colleague twice but got no response.
Similarpage
Note
Here beep means reaching someone through their pager, and it sits beside call as a separate channel. In Moore and Zavala's Wedding Vows Under Fire (2013), she had "neither called nor beeped him." The person paged is the object of the verb, and the message itself is the pager message.
- 5A short message delivered to someone's pager device.
A beep came through asking him to call the front desk.
He ignored the beep until his shift was finally over.
Similarpage
Note
The message takes its name from the tone that announced it on a pager. The usual construction is get a beep from someone, as in Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day" (1992), where the rapper gets one from Kym. Sending one is the matching verb.
- 6To call someone and let the phone ring only once, hanging up so that they call back instead.
Students often beep their parents to avoid using up their credit.
He beeped his friend, knowing she would return the call.
Similarflash
Note
A cost-saving trick named after the single ring: the caller hangs up so that the other person pays for the call back, usually because the caller is low on phone credit. Flash means the same. The return call is the whole point, which is why Deborah Eden's The Destroyer (2008) can complain, "I beeped him, but he didn't ring back."
- 7A coy, jokey way of saying to have sexual intercourse with someone, echoing the bleep that censors crude words on air.
The whole office gossiped that he had beeped the new intern.
She insisted she would never beep someone just to get ahead.
Similarbang, bonk, boink, bone, mount
Note
A coy stand-in that borrows the broadcast censor's bleep, letting the beep replace a word too crude to say. It takes the partner as a direct object (Jason beeped Sharlene). Keep it for jokey, informal talk. The humor depends on the listener catching the cover-up, and in a serious setting it reads as a smirk rather than as discretion.
- 8A control character in computing that signals a device to produce an audible alert; a synonym of the bell character.
Early terminals would ring whenever a program emitted a beep in its output.
Developers still send a beep down the terminal stream to flag failed commands.
Similarbell
Note
Computing has a name for the alert itself: the bell character, BEL, ASCII code 7. It tells a terminal or teletype to sound an audible signal. Bell is the standard name, and beep names the same character by its effect. Programmers speak of sending or emitting one into a program's output, not of making a noise directly.
Less common meanings
- 9A half-ton general-purpose light truck used by the military.
The convoy lost a beep to the mud halfway up the ridge.
Mechanics kept the old beep on the road long after the war.
Note
A wartime blend of big and jeep. These trucks were bigger versions of the light Willys MB Jeep, so the slang name stretched the familiar one. Despite the identical spelling, it has nothing to do with the horn's sound, which is imitative. It is dated US military slang and belongs in writing about World War II vehicles, not in current talk.
- 10A Dodge WC-series U.S. Army truck of World War II, made in half-ton, three-quarter-ton, and one-ton variants.
The museum restored a Dodge beep to its original wartime markings.
A three-quarter-ton beep carried the wounded back from the line.
- 11A three-quarter-ton general-purpose medium truck used by the military.
A medium beep ferried supplies across the cratered road.
The unit relied on the three-quarter-ton beep for heavier loads.
Note
The name grew with the vehicles. Once big plus jeep had named the half-ton truck, the word was stretched to cover the heavier three-quarter-ton class. Because one word now spans both weights, a writer who needs the distinction should state it outright, as in "a three-quarter-ton beep."
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Practice
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Origins
Onomatopoeic: the word imitates the sound it describes.
A blend of "big" and "jeep," so named for being bigger versions of the general-purpose superlight truck, the Willys MB "Jeep."