▪ I. ˈpipe-ˌline, n.
a. A continuous line of pipes; a conduit of iron pipes for conveying petroleum from the oil-wells to the market or refinery, or for supplying water to a town or district. Also attrib.
| 1873 J. T. Henry Early & Later Hist. Petroleum 283 The iron pipe lines for the conveyance of oil from the wells to railway shipping points play an important part in the transportation of the article. 1879 in I. M. Tarbell Hist. Standard Oil Co. (1904) I. 354 The pipe lines owned and controlled by the parties hereto have a joint capacity for transportation. 1883 Century Mag. July 332/2 When the tank at a well is nearly full, notice is sent to the nearest agency of the pipe lines. Ibid. 334/2 The pipe line system was a thing of small beginnings and slow growth. 1891 Daily News 3 June 5/6 A temporary pipe line has been laid across the bed of the Mersey,..and now the water is being discharged on the Lancashire side. 1924 C. Christy Big Game & Pygmies i. 2 Between Matadi and Leopoldville is a wonderful pipe line, by which crude mineral oil for the fleet of up-river steamers is pumped the whole two hundred odd miles by several pumping stations. 1943 Ann. Reg. 1942 263 A second first-class road..runs alongside the pipe-line from the Palestinian to the Iraqui frontier. 1953 Times 31 Oct. 4/6 A water supply had been brought by bamboo pipelines from a spring. 1961 Wall St. Jrnl. 8 Nov. 24/2 The filing..proposes construction of 210 miles of large-diameter pipeline. 1972 Drive Spring 60/1 Brakes, brake pipelines and hydraulic fluid are of life-and-limb importance. 1973 C. Callow Power from Sea i. 16 Underwater pipe⁓lines carrying natural gas at high pressure. 1976 Times 2 Oct. 17/8 Some of the pipeline workers may stay in Alaska. |
b. transf. and fig. in various senses (see quots.); spec. a channel of supply, information, communication, etc.; esp. in phr. in the pipeline, in progress; being worked on, dealt with, or produced; on the way from a supplier to a user. Also attrib.
| 1921 A. Huxley Crome Yellow vi. 58 You could write too..by getting into touch with your Subconscious. Have you ever read my little book, Pipe-Lines to the Infinite? 1935 Sun (Baltimore) 25 Aug. 6/2 It was implied, if not more, that the man who had the real inside track to the White House and the potential pipe line to the United States Treasury was none other than Dr. Byrd. 1942 Ibid. 1 Aug. 1/7 A foreign source here with continental pipe⁓lines of information said the Germans also were making peace feelers both to Britain and the United States and to Russia with the object of splitting the Allies. 1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §121/78 Veins and arteries,..pipe lines. 1945 Amer. Speech XX. 227/1 Pipeline time, from the time a requisition leaves a depot until the requested supplies arrive there. 1948 Economist 19 June 1026/2 The pipe-lines are full, stocks seem to be adequate, and there are signs of resistance to higher prices. 1948 Sheep Breeder Dec. 19/3 Sometimes the price of meat in the pipelines of distribution goes up—a fact that gives rise to claims that we are speculating. 1949 Partridge Dict. Slang Add. 1136/1 Pipe line, an aerial: R.A.F.: 1939 +. 1955 W. Gaddis Recognitions ii. v. 540 Them priests have a pipeline right into the cops. 1955 Times 23 Aug. 5/6 About a third of the patient applicants can consider themselves as ‘in the pipeline’, which means that the telephone engineers have the equipment ready for them. 1957 Economist 16 Nov. 565/2 With the further fall in primary commodities there must be a further improvement in Britain's terms of trade already, so to speak, in the pipeline. 1964 Observer 26 July 7/5 All these reforms will take time—and cause controversy—in the next Parliament. There are measures in the pipeline already. 1972 J. Mosedale Football vii. 94 There was a pipeline to the Tuscaloosa campus in those depression days, and Hutson was one of eight Arkansans who found their way to Alabama's football team. 1973 Daily Pennsylvanian 9 Oct. 1/2, I don't have a pipeline to God. 1973 Times 15 Nov. 25/2 The property development company has ‘some very exciting ideas in the pipeline’. 1976 Broadcast 16 Feb. 4/1 There's a new soap in the pipeline... The series/serial..will be shown twice weekly. |
c. Surfing slang. A very large wave, or the hollow part of such a wave. Also applied to a place where such waves are formed.
| 1963 Sunday Mail Mag. (Brisbane) 5 May 12/5 Pipeline, a very large tube (tube = hollow part of a wave). 1965 N.Z. Listener 17 Dec. 5/1 The achievement by which the champion surfers are judged is their ability to ride the Hawaiian pipeline... The pipeline breaks less than 50 yards from the beach over a coral reef. 1971 Times 9 Aug. 5/1 The surf-bums have a language all their own; they talk about pipelines, green rooms, roller-coasters. Ibid., The Banzai pipe-line in Hawaii, where the waves can be 25 to 30 feet high. |
d. Computers. A linear sequence of specialized modules used for pipelining. Freq. attrib.
| [1964 W. Bucholz Planning Computer System: Project Stretch xiv. 204 The data flow through the computer..is comparable to a pipeline which, once filled, has a large output no matter what its length.] 1965 AFIPS Conf. Proc. XXVII. i. 489 (heading) Circuit implementation of high speed pipeline systems. Ibid. 491/1 The pipeline is characterized by a succession of register and gate units. 1972 IEEE Trans. Computers XXI. 885/1 A two-stage pipeline is possible. 1977 Computing Surveys IX. 101/2 The CPU architecture of this machine is a simple pipeline served by four functional units. 1977 Sci. Amer. Sept. 220/2 Three kinds of systems that can truly be classed as parallel processors have been built. In one of them, the ‘pipeline’ processor, several processing elements, each of which is specialized for some particular task, are connected in sequence. |
▪ II. ˈpipe-line, v.
[f. the n.]
1. To provide with, or convey by, a line of pipes.
| 1886 Pall Mall G. 22 Oct. 2/2 Russia has the finest oil-field in the world in the Transcaucasus, which she is now ‘pipe-lining’ down to the Black Sea. |
2. Computers. To design or execute using the technique of pipelining.
| 1971 Sci. Amer. Feb. 76/2 Current efforts in ‘pipelining’ the processing of ‘operands’ will allow a further significant increase in speed. 1972 IEEE Trans. Computers XXI. 881/1 This note will study the problem of pipelining the addition and multiplication functions of the arithmetic unit. |