stovepipe
noun, verb
Forms stovepipes stovepiping stovepiped stove-pipe
- noun Sheet-metal tubing used as a chimney for a stove or furnace.
- noun A channel for information which is compartmentalized in such a manner that some parties who might be interested in its use or able to make use of it are restricted from accessing it.
- noun (clothing) A stovepipe hat.
- noun (firearms) A type of malfunction affecting breechloading firearms, where a spent cartridge casing fails to eject completely, instead becoming stuck in the firearm's ejection port, usually oriented vertically or nearly so.
- noun (military slang, World War I– World War II) A trench mortar such as the Stokes mortar.
- verb (transitive, idiomatic) To collect or store (information) in a compartmentalized manner, so that some parties who might be interested in its use or able to make use of it are restricted from accessing it.
- verb (intransitive, firearms) Of a cartridge case, to become wedged vertically in the ejection port of a breechloading firearm, rather than ejecting completely from the weapon.
- verb (espionage) To improperly share classified information or share such information without sufficient context.
Synonyms
Etymology
From stove + pipe. The firearms sense is due to the trapped cartridge case resembling a stovepipe of the stove sense.
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “stovepipe”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details