wipe

Formswipes, wiping, wiped

Pluralwipes

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To move an object across a surface, keeping contact, in order to remove some substance from it.

   He wiped the counter with a damp rag to remove the spilled flour.

   Wipe your muddy boots on the mat before coming inside.

   Similarclean, mop, rub, swab, sponge

   Note

   The physical core of the word comes from Old English wīpian, 'to wipe, rub, cleanse', and further back from a root meaning 'to twist, wind around'. Where rub names the motion, wipe names its purpose: something comes off. It takes either the surface (wipe your glasses) or what is removed (wipe the sweat from my brow). In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), Baum's soldier makes visitors wipe their feet.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To remove a substance by rubbing it off, away, or out, until the surface is left clean.

   Wipe out the inside of the jar before you refill it.

   A single damp sponge wiped away years of grime from the tiles.

   Similarclean, scrub, rub, remove

   Note

   Here the stress falls on what disappears, not on the surface left behind. English usually marks that with a particle: wipe away, wipe off, wipe out. Milton could still do without one in Paradise Lost (1667): 'Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.' The same bare verb stretches from smudges to people, as in 'he wipes half the population', where removal becomes obliteration.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A soft piece of cloth or similar material used to clean or dry a surface.

   He pulled a disinfectant wipe from the canister to clean his desk.

   Travelers often carry antibacterial wipes for quick cleanups.

   Similartowelette, cloth

   Note

   A countable noun that tends to come in packets. Mary Ann Zoellner and Alicia Ybarbo's Today's Moms (2009) packs 'a travel packet of wipes' for a plane trip and advises using a wipe on the surface before putting a baby down. One is a wipe and several are wipes; the material itself is not called wipe.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A single instance of moving a cloth or hand across a surface to clean it.

   The counter just needs a quick wipe and it'll be clean.

   She gave the dashboard a thorough wipe with a microfiber cloth.

   Similarclean, rub, swipe, dust

   Note

   The noun behind a quick cleanup also counts erasures of data. Multiple wipes of a hard disk are repeated passes of the computing verb, so the same noun stretches from a kitchen counter to a storage drive and takes numbers and adjectives in both places.

5. 5
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To clean the anus and buttocks with paper or cloth after defecation.

   Most children learn to wipe themselves by about age four.

   He reached for the toilet paper and wiped.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To erase the data held on a device or storage medium.

   She wiped the laptop before donating it to the school.

   Wipe the server's drives before decommissioning them.

   Similarerase, clear, format, purge, scrub

   Note

   Computing borrowed the cleaning verb for storage. The object is usually a whole device or medium: you wipe a hard drive, a laptop or a server. The implication, stronger than delete, is that the old contents are overwritten and cannot be recovered. The noun follows suit, since the act of wiping can be counted, as in multiple wipes of a hard disk.

7. 7
   verbfigurativelytransitive

   To remove a visible expression from one's face.

   He wiped the smirk from his face when the teacher turned around.

   Wipe that look off your face before your mother sees it.

   Similarerase

   Note

   This is more a scolding idiom than a description. 'Wipe that smirk off your face' is a warning to someone whose expression is out of line, typically built from that, a word for the expression, and off or from. In First Love (2008), Adele bends the pattern with 'wipe that look out of your eyes', moving the expression from the face to the eyes.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To smear a substance over a surface using a sweeping, sliding motion.

   She wiped sunscreen across the children's shoulders.

   Wipe the wax evenly across the table's surface.

   Similarsmear, spread, rub, daub

   Note

   The motion is the same, but the result runs the other way: wiping spreads a substance instead of removing it. The object is the stuff applied, often followed by across, over or all over, as in 'you've wiped grease all over your shirt'. That is how to tell it from the 'remove' meaning, where the object is what goes away.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A film transition in which one shot replaces another by traveling across the frame from one side, or in a special shape.

   The director chose a clockwise wipe to move from the city to the desert.

   Classic serials linked their scenes with a quick horizontal wipe.

   Note

   The noun for the device that the editing verb performs, also called a wipeoff. It need not travel straight across the frame, because the moving edge can follow a special shape, so editors speak of a horizontal or a clockwise wipe. Unlike a plain cut, it is a transition the viewer sees move.

10. 10
    verbintransitive

    To replace one scene or slide with another over time, sliding it across along a horizontal axis as though peeling off a layer.

    He chose to wipe between the two scenes rather than cut.

    The presentation wipes smoothly from one slide to the next.

    Note

    An editor's verb that describes the image itself in motion: the outgoing shot seems to slide aside like a layer. It works both with and without an object, so you can wipe between scenes, or a shot can wipe to the next. Nicole Seymour's Bad Environmentalism (2018) sets 'wipes' in scare quotes for a stunt in which Steve-O pretends to grab the edge of the screen, making the metaphor literal.

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