pip to the post
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.35 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To overcome a strong competitor in a sporting event, especially by gaining a small advantage at the last decisive moment.
verb
To overcome a prominent competitor, gaining their position, especially by making a smart, sudden move.
Example Sentences
- ""Pipped to the post: What happens to famous athletes who just miss a place on the podium?" (end of the title) A place on the podium can be missed by tiny fractions – and finish a career. Simon Usborne talks to some famous Olympian losers about the moment their dream ended."
- "What may bar EastEnders from acceptance in the U.S. is not immorality but unintelligibility. PBS may even distribute a glossary of Cockney phrases so that Americans will know what a character means when he or she is "over the moon," "skint," "pipped to the post," or "in the club" (happy, broke, defeated, or pregnant)."
- "Both were pipped to the post in 1888 by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, a student of Hermann von Helmholtz (himself one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century German physics) who announced to the world that he had found a way of propagating and detecting these long-sought-for electromagnetic waves."