Skip to main content
pipe bowl

pipe bowl

6.5
The round open part of a smoking pipe that holds tobacco
  • noun
  • /paɪp boʊl/
translation icon : cabeza de pipa
  • After finishing his smoke, he cleaned the pipe bowl to prepare it for the next use.

Examples

  • And the dean, who had fired the lot of them, Jerry too that year, pounded his pipe bowl on the table.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • He smoked cigars and a pipe, often stuffing the cigar stub into a pipe bowl to finish it.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • "The Reverend Eldred's fingers clenched more closely" round the carven face on his pipe bowl, the mask of some unnamed woodland grotesque from the German forests.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • He carefully packed the tobacco into the pipe bowl before lighting it.

  • The old wooden pipe bowl had a beautiful, intricate design carved into it.

Synonyms

bowl
vspipe bowl
44 6.7

The rounded part of a smoking pipe that holds tobacco

has identical meaning but is the longer two-word term

Surface Forms

pipe bowl singular
pipe bowls plural

Morphology

pipe + bowl

The compound simply names a part–whole relation: the 'bowl' (hollow top) of a 'pipe', so the overall meaning is directly and literally built from the constituent words. Both terms are concrete and the noun+noun composition is a common, cross-linguistic pattern, so a B1 learner who knows 'pipe' and 'bowl' will readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

The noun pipe bowl comes from the simple picture of a smoking pipe with a small bowl at the end that holds the tobacco. So the name means 'the round, open part of a tobacco pipe that holds the tobacco'.