PIPE

9 definitions found across Law Mind sources

PIPEAuthored
The Law Mind • 818 words
Definition
In legal and historical usage, PIPE carries two distinct technical meanings, neither of which corresponds to the term's common usage as a conduit or musical instrument. 1. Exchequer Roll. The Pipe, or Great Roll of the Pipe, was the principal financial record of the English Exchequer — a continuous series of annual rolls recording royal revenues, debts, accounts rendered by sheriffs, and other fiscal transactions of the Crown. The Pipe Rolls constitute one of the oldest surviving series of English administrative records, running from the twelfth century into the nineteenth. "Pipe" in this context refers to the cylindrical shape formed when the parchment sheets were rolled for storage. 2. Liquid Measure. A pipe is a unit of liquid capacity equal to two hogsheads. The precise volume varied by commodity and era, but a pipe of wine was commonly reckoned at 126 gallons in English and early American commercial usage. It appears in contracts, customs records, tariff schedules, and probate inventories involving wine, oil, and other bulk liquids. ---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A tube or hollow cylinder used to convey water, gas, steam, or other substances; also a wind instrument. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Any long tube or hollow body of wood, metal, earthenware, or the like: especially, one used as a conductor of water, steam, gas, etc." Also a wind instrument of music. The gap between common and legal meaning here is nearly total. A researcher encountering PIPE in a legal or administrative source should not assume either the conduit sense or the musical sense. The two legal meanings — an Exchequer accounting roll and a unit of liquid measure — are entirely distinct from everyday usage and from each other. Context will almost always resolve which legal meaning applies: fiscal or governmental records point to the Exchequer roll; commercial, probate, or customs documents point to the measure. ---
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Pipe Roll (also: Great Roll of the Pipe). The specific designation for the annual Exchequer rolls. The earliest surviving example dates to the reign of Henry I (1130–1131), with a continuous series beginning under Henry II. Pipe Rolls were the formal record against which sheriffs accounted for revenues owed the Crown. Pipe (Liquid Measure). Appears in historical sources as a measure for wine, oil, and similar commodities. Related measures in the same hierarchy include the tun (two pipes), the hogshead (half a pipe), and the barrel (one-quarter of a pipe, approximately). ---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers in English legal history or early American legal records will encounter both senses, and the risk of misreading is real. For the Exchequer roll meaning: The Pipe Rolls are primary sources for medieval English fiscal, administrative, and legal history. References to "the pipe," "the great roll," or "pipe roll" in secondary legal literature point toward this documentary record. Researchers working on Crown revenues, feudal obligations, or the history of the Exchequer need to recognize that "pipe" in these contexts is not metaphorical — it names a specific archival series. For the liquid measure: This sense appears heavily in colonial American legal instruments, probate records, customs and tariff law, and commercial contracts through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A pipe of wine in a will or an invoice is a precise quantity, and confusing it with a barrel or hogshead will distort readings of an estate's value or a merchant's stock. The measure is also cargo-related, appearing in admiralty and insurance documents. Neither meaning survived robustly into modern American law. Both are essentially archival terms for researchers rather than operative legal concepts in contemporary practice. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary provide identical minimal entries, listing the two meanings without elaboration or cross-reference. The entries are accurate as far as they go but offer no guidance on the Pipe Roll's historical significance or the variation in the liquid measure by commodity and jurisdiction. Black's treatment is consistent with its general approach to archaic measures and historical administrative terms — functional identification without research depth. No divergence exists between the two editions on this term. Neither edition addresses the Pipe Roll's scope as a primary source series, which is the most legally significant dimension of the first definition for historical researchers. ---
Jurisdictional Note
The Exchequer Pipe Roll sense is exclusively an English (and by extension early Welsh and Irish administrative) concept with no American counterpart. The liquid measure sense carried into American colonial and early republic commercial law but fell out of statutory use as metric and standardized measures displaced traditional English commodity measures through the nineteenth century. Researchers in Louisiana should note that civil law commercial traditions used different volume nomenclature. ---
Related Terms
Exchequer — Great Roll — Hogshead — Tun — Barrel — Liquid Measure — Sheriff's Account — Crown Revenue — Pipe Roll
PIPEmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
A roll in the exchequer; otherwise called the "great roll." A liquid measure containing two hogsheads.
PIPEmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
A roll in the exchequer; otherwise called the “great roll.” A liquid measure containing two hogsheads. ee
PIPEn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A wind instrument of music, consisting of a tube or tubes of straw, reed, wood, or metal; any tube which produces musical sounds; as, a shepherd's pipe; the pipe of an organ. "Tunable as sylvan pipe." Milton. Now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe. Shak. Any long tube or hollow body of wood, metal, earthenware, or the like: especially, one used as a conductor of water, steam, gas, etc. A small bowl with a hollow steam, -- used in smoking tobacco, and, sometimes, other substances. A passageway for the air in speaking and breathing; the windpipe, or one of its divisions. The key or sound of the voice. [R.] Shak. The peeping whistle, call, or note of a bird. The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds. Tennyson. The bagpipe; as, the pipes of Lucknow. An elongated body or vein of ore. A roll formerly used in the English exchequer, otherwise called the Great Roll, on which were taken down the accounts of debts to the king; -- so called because put together like a pipe. Mozley & W. A boatswain's whistle, used to call the crew to their duties; also, the sound of it. A cask usually containing two hogsheads, or 126 wine gallons; also, the quantity which it contains. Pipe fitter, one who fits pipes together, or applies pipes, as to an engine or a building. -- Pipe fitting, a piece, as a coupling, an elbow, a valve, etc., used for connecting lengths of pipe or as accessory to a pipe. -- Pipe office, an ancient office in the Court of Exchequer, in which the clerk of the pipe made out leases of crown lands, accounts of cheriffs, etc. [Eng.] -- Pipe tree (Bot.), the lilac and the mock orange; -- so called because their were formerly used to make pipe stems; -- called also pipe privet. -- Pipe wrench, or Pipetongs, a jawed tool for gripping a pipe, in turning or holding it. -- To smoke the pipe of peace, to smoke from the same pipe in token of amity or preparatory to making a treaty of peace, -- a custom of the American Indians.
PIPEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To play on a pipe, fife, flute, or other tubular wind instrument of music. We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced. Matt. xi. 17. To call, convey orders, etc., by means of signals on a pipe or whistle carried by a boatswain. To emit or have a shrill sound like that of a pipe; to whistle. "Oft in the piping shrouds." Wordsworth. To become hollow in the process of solodifying; -- said of an ingot, as of steel.
PIPEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To perform, as a tune, by playing on a pipe, flute, fife, etc.; to utter in the shrill tone of a pipe. A robin . . . was piping a few querulous notes. W. Irving. To call or direct, as a crew, by the boatswain's whistle. As fine a ship's company as was ever piped aloft. Marryat. To furnish or equip with pipes; as, to pipe an engine, or a building.
Pipename
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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A surname. | An unincorporated community in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, United States. Named after the calumet (pipe) smoked by native Americans.
PIPEnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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Acronym of private investment in public equity.
pipenoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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Meanings relating to a wind instrument. | A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube. | Meanings relating to a wind instrument. | A tube used to produce sound in an organ; an organ pipe. | Meanings relating to a wind instrument. | The key or sound of the voice. | Meanings relating to a wind instrument. | A high-pitched sound, especially of a bird. | Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. | A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications. | Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. | A rigid tube that transports water, steam, or other fluid, as used in plumbing and numerous other applications. | A water pipe. | Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. | A tubular passageway in the human body such as a blood vessel or the windpipe. | Meanings relating to a hollow conduit. | A man's penis. | Meanings relating to a container. | A large container for storing liquids or foodstuffs; now especially a vat or cask of cider or wine. (See a diagram comparing cask sizes.) | Meanings relating to a container. | The contents of such a vessel, as a liquid measure, sometimes set at 126 wine gallons; half a tun. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | Decorative edging stitched to the hems or seams of an object made of fabric (clothing, hats, curtains, pillows, etc.), often in a contrasting color; piping. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | A type of pasta similar to macaroni. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | A vertical conduit through the Earth's crust below a volcano through which magma has passed, often filled with volcanic breccia. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | One of the goalposts of the goal. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | An elongated or irregular body or vein of ore. | Meanings relating to something resembling a tube. | An anonymous satire or essay, insulting and frequently libellous, written on a piece of paper which was rolled up and left somewhere public where it could be found and thus spread, to embarrass the author's enemies. | Meanings relating to computing. | A mechanism that enables one program to communicate with another by sending its output to the other as input. | Meanings relating to computing. | A data backbone, or broadband Internet access. | Meanings relating to computing. | The character |. | Meanings relating to a smoking implement. | A hollow stem with a bowl at one end used for smoking, especially a tobacco pipe but also including various other forms such as a water pipe. | Meanings relating to a smoking implement. | The distance travelled between two rest periods during which one could smoke a pipe. | A telephone.

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