cheep

English

Etymology

Onomatopoeic.

Pronunciation

• enPR: chēp, IPA^(key): /t͡ʃiːp/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Homophone: cheap
• Rhymes: -iːp

Verb

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

make high-pitched sounds

• Bulgarian: писукам (bg) (pisukam)
• Catalan: piular (ca), xerrotejar (ca)
• Czech: čiřikat impf
• Finnish: sirkuttaa (fi)
• French: piailler (fr), chanter (fr)
• Greek: κελαηδώ (el) (kelaïdó)
• Hungarian: csipog (hu)
• Indonesian: ciak (id)
• Irish: gíog
• Norman: piauler, tuiter
• Portuguese: piar (pt)
• Russian: чири́кать (ru) impf (čiríkatʹ)
• Turkish: cıvıldamak (tr)
• Walloon: tchîper (wa), tchîpter (wa), tchîpyî (wa)

Noun

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

cheep

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

Translations

short, high-pitched sound made by a small bird

• Bulgarian: писукане (bg) n (pisukane)
• Czech: čiřikání (cs)
• French: cui-cui (fr)
• Irish: gíog f
• Russian: чири́к (ru) (čirík), чик-чири́к (čik-čirík)
• Turkish: cıvıltı (tr)
• Vietnamese: chiếp chiếp

Derived terms

• cheeper
• cheepy