# pipeline

Pronunciation: say "PYP-lyn" /ˈpaɪpˌlaɪn/

## Noun

1. A conduit made of connected pipes used to convey water, gas, petroleum, or similar substances.
   - Simple: A long line of connected pipes that carries water, gas, or oil from one place to another.
   - _Crews spent two years laying the pipeline across the desert._
   - _Several pipelines carry crude oil from the inland fields to coastal refineries._
2. An organized system or process along which something is carried or moved forward.
   - Simple: A set of steps that something moves through before it is finished or ready.
   - _Three new drugs are in the company's development pipeline._
   - _The studio's animation pipeline takes a film from storyboard to final render._
3. A continuous source that steadily contributes benefits, talent, or innovation.
   - Simple: A steady supply of new people, ideas, or other good things that keeps coming.
   - _The university serves as a pipeline of engineering talent for local startups._
   - _Strong farm systems give baseball clubs a steady pipeline of young players._
4. A physical or logical channel that transmits information sequentially, so that the first data in is the first data out.
   - Simple: A path that moves information along in order, so the first piece in comes out first.
   - _Each video frame enters the pipeline and emerges in exactly the order it arrived._
   - _The shell connects the two programs with a pipeline, feeding one's output to the other in sequence._
5. A commonly seen progression by which a person's interests, situation, or views tend to develop.
   - Simple: A common path that many people follow as their interests, lives, or opinions change over time.
   - _Commentators warn about the pipeline that leads bored teenagers toward extremist online communities._
   - _She laughed at how neatly she had followed the theater-kid-to-English-teacher pipeline._
9. The hollow inside of a breaking wave that a surfer rides as the crest begins to close over it.
   - Simple: The hollow space inside a wave when the top of the wave curls over a surfer.
   - _He tucked low and shot through the pipeline before the wave collapsed behind him._
   - _Only experienced surfers attempt to ride the pipeline on a heavy reef break._

## Verb

6. To convey something by means of a system of pipes.
   - Simple: To send water, gas, or oil somewhere through pipes.
   - _The company pipelines crude oil from the wellheads to a coastal terminal._
   - _Engineers proposed to pipeline treated wastewater back to the irrigation district._
7. To lay a system of pipes through an area.
   - Simple: To put a system of pipes through a place.
   - _Contractors plan to pipeline the industrial district before the new plant opens._
   - _The utility pipelined the valley in the 1960s to deliver natural gas to remote ranches._
8. To design a microchip or similar system so that processing takes place in efficient stages, with the output of each stage fed as input to the next.
   - Simple: To design a computer chip or similar system so work moves in stages, each stage passing its result to the next.
   - _The design team pipelined the arithmetic unit, letting it begin one instruction before finishing the previous one._
   - _Vendors pipeline their graphics chips so that several frames are in progress simultaneously._

## Origin

A compound of "pipe" and "line."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/pipeline (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).