pip [L18th] The name for the small hard seed in a fruit is a shortening of pippin [LME], an apple grown from seed. English adopted pippin from French, but its ultimate origin is unknown. The British politician Sir Eric Geddes was the first to use the expression squeeze until the pips squeak, ‘to extract the maximum amount of money from’, in a 1918 speech about the compensation to be paid by Germany after the First World War. Another pip is an unpleasant disease of chickens and other birds which is documented as far back as medieval times. From the late 15th century various human diseases and ailments also came to be called the pip, though the precise symptoms are rarely specified. Whatever the nature of the disease, the sufferer would probably be in a foul mood, hence the pip became ‘bad temper’ and to give someone the pip was to irritate or depress them. The name came from medieval Dutch pippe, which was probably based on Latin pituita ‘slime, phlegm’, found also in pituitary gland [E17th].