The Equine Roots of Fipple

Hello,

I can’t recall where I heard the word fipple, a podcast perhaps, but I loved the sound of it and immediately jotted it down as an obscure word to use for the “Mystery Word” game on “Wordfoolery Wednesday” on the radio. I later thought better of that as our listeners might be too inclined to share definitions of an unsavoury nature due to its spelling. The show airs around noon so we try to keep matters polite for younger audience members.

However fipple is too good a word to skip. I’m pretty sure my blog readers are all adults, so here we go. Do you know what a fipple is? If you’re of a musical bent, you might know it.

Organ in music room of Carton House, Maynooth – former residence of the Duke of Leinster

Collins dictionary defines it as a wooden plug forming party of the mouthpiece of a recorder instrument or a similar device in an organ pipe used to produce a flute-like tone.

Several dictionaries list fipple as dating to the 1600s but being of unknown origin. I must point out that fipple does sound a little like the sound your mouth makes when blowing into a recorder so it could come from that, but I happened upon the suggestion that it could be related to the Icelandic word flipi (lip of a horse) and if you think about the way a horse can blow out its lips, that’s a little like those efforts to blow air into a recorder or organ.

We’ll probably never know the true origin of fipple, but it does present a strange mental image of a mare playing the organ in the music room of some grand country house. Very talented horses back in the 1600s, you know.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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p.s. It’s day 13 of NaNoWriMo 2023 today. I’m on 26,276 words and enjoying writing “The Librarian’s Secret Diary”.