noun
- Often bagpipes. a reed instrument consisting of a melody pipe and one or more accompanying drone pipes protruding from a windbag into which the air is blown by the mouth or a bellows.
verb (used with object), bag·piped, bag·pip·ing.
- Nautical. to back (a fore-and-aft sail) by hauling the sheet to windward.
pl n
- any of a family of musical wind instruments in which sounds are produced in reed pipes supplied with air from a bag inflated either by the player’s mouth, as in the Irish bagpipes or Highland bagpipes of Scotland, or by arm-operated bellows, as in the Northumbrian bagpipes
noun
- (modifier) of or relating to the bagpipesa bagpipe maker
late 14c., from bag (n.) + pipe (n.1); originally a favorite instrument in England as well as the Celtic lands, but by 1912 English army officers’ slang for it was agony bags. Related: Bagpiper (early 14c.).