Chapter Pin Money to Piraeus of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Piou-piou An infantry soldier. This is probably a corruption of pion, a pawn or foot-soldier. Cotgrave, however, thinks the French foot-soldiers are so called from their habit of pilfering chickens, whose cry is piou piou.

Pious (2 syl.). The Romans called a man who revered his father pius; hence Antoninus was called pius, because he requested that his adopted father (Hadrian) might be ranked among the gods. AEneas was called pius because he rescued his father from the burning city of Troy. The Italian word pietà (q.v.) has a similar meaning.
   The Pious. Ernst I., founder of the House of Gotha. (1601-1674.)
   Robert, son of Hugues Capet, (971, 996-1031.)
   Eric IX. of Sweden. (*, 1155-1161.)

Pip The hero of Dickens's Great Expectations. He is first a poor boy, and then a man of wealth.

Pipe Anglo-Saxon pip, a pipe or flute.
   Put that into your pipe and smoke it. Digest that, if you can. An expression used by one who has given an adversary a severe rebuke. The allusion is to the pipes of peace and war smoked by the American Indians.
   Put your pipe out. Spoil your piping or singing; make you sing another tune, or in another key. “Take your shine out” has a similar force.
   As you pipe, I must dance. I must accommodate myself to your wishes.
   To pipe your eye. To snivel; to cry.

Pipe Rolls or Great Rolls of the Pipe. The series of Great Rolls of the Exchequer, beginning 2 Henry II., and continued to 1834, when the Pipe Office was abolished. These rolls are now in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane.

“Take, for instance the Pipe Rolls, that magnificent series of documents on which, from the middle of the 12th century until well on in the 19th, we have a perfect account of the Crown revenue, rendered by the sheriffs of the different countries.”- Notes and Queries, June 3, 1893, p. 421.

   Office of the Clerk of the Pipe. A very ancient office in the Court of Exchequer, where leases of Crown lands, sheriffs' accounts, etc., were made out. It existed in the reign of Henry II., and was abolished in the reign of William IV. Lord Bacon says, “The office is so called because the whole receipt of the court is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills, as water into a cistern.

Pipe of Peace The North American Indians present a pipe to anyone they wish to be on good terms with. To receive the pipe and smoke together is to promote friendship and goodwill, but to refuse the offer is virtually a declaration of hostility.

Pipeclay Routine; fossilised military dogmas of no real worth. In government offices the term red-tape is used to express the same idea. Pipeclay was at one time largely used by soldiers for making their gloves, accoutrements, and clothes look clean and smart.

Pipelet A concierge or French door-porter; so called from a character in Eugène Sue's Mysteries of Paris.

Piper The Pied Piper. (See Pied.)
   Who's to pay the piper? (See Pay.)
   Tom Piper. So the piper is called in the morris dance.
    There is apparently another Tom Piper, referred to by Drayton and others, of whom nothing is now known. He seems to have been a sort of Mother Goose, or raconteur of short tales

“Tom Piper is gone out, and mirth bewail's,
He never will come in to tell us tales.”

Piper that Played before Moses (By the). Per tibicinem qui coram Mose modulatus est. This oath is from Tales in Blackwood [Magazine, May, 1838]: Father Tom and the Pope (name of the tale). (Notes and Queries, April 2, 1887, p. 276.)

Piper's News or Hawker's Hews, Fiddler's News. News known to all the world. “Le secret de polichinelle.”

Piping Hot Hot as water which pipes or sings.