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Blip vs Spike - What's the difference?

blip | spike |

As a noun blip

is a small dot registered on electronic equipment, such as a radar or oscilloscope screen.

As a verb blip

is to skip over or ignore (with out ).

As a proper noun spike is

.

blip

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A small dot registered on electronic equipment, such as a radar or oscilloscope screen.
  • * 1985 , Frederick Forsyth, The Fourth Protocol
  • When the blip began to move up the oscilloscope screen, they followed again.
  • * 2004 , Asaf Degani, Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001
  • At 6:45 pm, the chief officer saw a blip on the radar, approximately seven nautical miles away.
  • A short sound of a single pitch, usually electronically generated.
  • * 2000 , Ken Norton, Going the Distance
  • Blip ..Blip..Blip..Blip  There was that annoying noise again.
  • * 2002 , Richard Strozzi-Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets
  • The little “blip ” sound that happens when a balloon is shot down becomes a duet with the player. “Blip” “Damn!” “Blip” “Damn!”
  • A brief and usually minor aberration or deviation from what is expected or normal.
  • * 2003 , Brett Grodeck, The First Year - HIV: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed
  • There's a chance this is just a viral blip , an intermittent spike of low-level virus that just happens in people on successful HIV treatment.
  • * 2003 , Dany Spencer Adams, Lab Math: A Handbook of Measurements, Calculations, and Other Quantitative Skills for Use at the Bench
  • As a cell moves through the aperture it causes a blip (a brief change) in the voltage when the nonconductive cell briefly displaces the conductive medium.

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • To skip over or ignore (with out ).
  • * 1990 , Hearing Before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, Defining the Frontier: A Policy Challenge
  • If we look, for example, at Laramie County, with a population density of 26.8 per square mile, if you blipped out Cheyenne, Laramie County would change significantly.
  • * 1996 , John Dunning, The Bookman's Wake
  • He listened but his mind heard only words and blipped out meanings.
  • To change state abruptly, such as between off and on or dark and light, sometimes implying motion.
  • * 2003 , Dennis Lehane, Mystic River
  • And yet, they pulsed and glowed and shimmied and flared and stared at you, just like now—staring in at his and Whitey's own lights as they blipped past on the expressway....
  • * 2005 , Craig Lansford, Tales from Salome: Broken Angel
  • The screen blipped out as the connection was terminated.... A few seconds passed before the screen again blipped to life.

    spike

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An ear of corn or grain.
  • # (botany) A kind of inflorescence in which sessile flowers are arranged on an unbranched elongated axis.
  • #
  • oil of spike
  • Something pointed or sharp.
  • # A sort of very large nail; anything resembling such a nail in shape.
  • #* Addison
  • He wears on his head the corona radiata ; the spikes that shoot out represent the rays of the sun.
  • # The long, narrow part of a woman's high-heeled shoe that elevates the heel.
  • # A sharp peak in a graph.
  • # a surge in power.
  • # (informal) In spikes : running shoes with spikes in the soles.
  • # (volleyball) An attack from, usually, above the height of the net performed with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
  • (zoology) An adolescent male deer.
  • (slang) The casual ward of a workhouse.
  • * 1933 : , p. 139.
  • "Dere's tay spikes', and cocoa '''spikes''', and skilly ' spikes ."

    Synonyms

    * catkin, raceme, cluster, corymb, umbel

    Derived terms

    {{der3, marlinspike , spike addition}}

    Verb

    (spik)
  • To fix on a spike; to pierce or run through with a spike.
  • # To fasten with spikes, or long, large nails.
  • to spike down planks
  • # To set or furnish with spikes.
  • (Young)
  • # (military) To render (a gun) unusable by driving a metal spike into its touch hole.
  • #* 1834 , (Frederick Marryat), Peter Simple :
  • He jumped down, wrenched the hammer from the armourer’s hand, and seizing a nail from the bag, in a few moments he had spiked the gun.
  • #* 1990 , (Peter Hopkirk), The Great Game , Folio Society 2010, p. 235-6:
  • Small skirmishes also took place, and the Afghans managed to seize a pair of mule-guns and force the British to spike and abandon two other precious guns.
  • # (journalism) To decide not to publish or make public. (From the former practice of newspaper editors impaling sheets of typewritten articles not selected for publication on a metal spike or spindle placed on their desks: see 2010 quotation.)
  • #*
  • #* '>citation
  • # (American football) To slam a football to the ground, usually in celebration of scoring a touchdown, or to stop expiring time on the game clock after snapping the ball as to save time for the losing team to attempt to score the tying or winning points.
  • # (volleyball) To attack from, usually, above the height of the net with the intent to send the ball straight to the floor of the opponent or off the hands of the opposing block.
  • To increase sharply.
  • Traffic accidents spiked in December when there was ice on the roads.
  • To add a small amount of one substance to another.
  • The water sample to be tested has been spiked with arsenic, antimony, mercury, and lead in quantities commonly found in industrial effluents.
  • * '>citation
  • # (specifically) To covertly put alcohol or another intoxicating substance into food or drink.
  • She spiked my lemonade with vodka!
  • Derived terms

    * spike someone's guns

    Synonyms

    * (volleyball): attack, hit