blip

Etymology

Onomatopoeic.

noun

1. (electronics) A small dot registered on electronic equipment, such as a radar or oscilloscope screen.
   When the blip began to move up the oscilloscope screen, they followed again. 1984 August, Frederick [McCarthy] Forsyth, The Fourth Protocol, London: Hutchinson
   At 6:45 pm, the chief officer saw a blip on the radar, approximately seven nautical miles away. 2004, Asaf Degani, “The Grounding of the Royal Majesty”, in Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces beyond 2001, New York, N.Y., Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, page 111
2. A short sound of a single pitch, usually electronically generated.
   Blip..Blip..Blip..Blip / There was that annoying noise again. Anger entered my subconscious as the dream came to an abrupt end. 2000, Ken Norton, Marshall Terrill, Mike Fitzgerald, “Prologue”, in Going the Distance, Champaign, Ill.: Sports Publishing, page 2
   The most popular event is Joel's computer-based biofeedback game. […] The goal is to move the balloons skyward while avoiding the rockets that the computer shoots toward the balloons. You dodge the rockets by consciously adjusting your muscle tone between relaxation and tension. […] The little "blip" sound that happens when a balloon is shot down becomes a duet with the player. "Blip" "Damn!" "Blip" "Damn!" "Blip" "Damn!" 2007, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets, 4th edition, Berkeley, Calif.: Blue Snake Books, page 39
3. (by extension) A brief and usually minor aberration or deviation from what is expected or normal.
   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, Brett Grodeck, The First Year—HIV: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed (First Year Series), New York, N.Y.: Marlowe
   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. 2003, Dany Spencer Adams, Lab Math: A Handbook of Measurements, Calculations, and Other Quantitative Skills for Use at the Bench, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
   Barack Obama had become exasperated by the propensity of the party establishment to panic at every psephological blip. 28 February 2010, Gary Younge, “The Tea Party is a dynamic force, but it is still unruly and incoherent”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 2016-03-16
   […] and therefore it’s too soon to say if the supposed “long peace” we’ve been enjoying since the end of the second world war is a blip or a sustained trend. 2021-11-07, Laura Spinney, “Can history teach us anything about the future of war – and peace?”, in The Guardian
4. (Internet, historical) An individual message or document in the Google Wave software framework.
   When a participant has full access permissions to a wave, he or she can change the contents of all blips and reply within or after blips. 2010, Gina Trapani, Adam Pash, The Complete Guide to Google Wave, page 51
   Although the wiki-like editing capabilities of Google Wave represent a valuable feature, there is some debate about whether participants should edit other participants' blips or their own blips. 2010, Andres Ferrate, Google Wave: Up and Running, page 87

verb

1. (intransitive, informal) To change state abruptly, such as between off and on or dark and light, sometimes implying motion.
   1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure We got a call that Pat still on the respirator & that the doc said that now because the EEG was blipping, they couldn't unhook him from the respirator.
   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, just one more set of red and yellow lights streaking along amid a current of red and yellow lights that blipped, blipped, blipped through an unremarkable Sunday dusk. 2001, Dennis Lehane, Mystic River, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company
   The screen blipped out as the connection was terminated. […] A few seconds passed before the screen again blipped to life, but instead of Melissa's radiant face there was a man in obvious security garb staring at him. 2005, Craig Lansford, Stephen Chamberlin, “Scene III”, in Broken Angel (Tales from Salome; 1; The Sorian Chronicles; book I), rev. edition, Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse
2. (transitive) Synonym of bleep (“to replace offending words in a broadcast recording with a tone”)
   […] even walking off his own show once after an NBC censor had arbitrarily blipped a mildly risque joke from the day's tape. 2003, Harry Castleman, Walter J. Podrazik, Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, page 155