stovepipe

English

Alternative forms

• stove-pipe

Etymology

stove +‎ pipe. The firearms sense is due to the trapped cartridge case resembling a stovepipe of the stove sense.

Noun

stovepipe (plural stovepipes)

1. Sheet-metal tubing used as a chimney for a stove or furnace.
   • 1939 July, “Overseas Railways: Baltic Island Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 49:

     On the Visby-Västerhejde Railway there is a steam car. [...] The upperworks consist of a short clerestory coach body with end platforms and the engine chimney protruding from the roof like a stovepipe.

   • 1994, Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 146:

     Glass windows replaced the old tiny windows of selenite (crystallized gypsum), and stovepipe replaced adobe chimneys.

2. 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.
3. (clothing) A stovepipe hat.
   • 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Chippenham (1841)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 57:

     I'm sure the Brunel-designed stone-built structure would have had a hatstand for his trademark stovepipe. I can picture him rocking up there of a morning and lobbing it nonchalantly onto the hatstand.

4. (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.
5. (military slang, World War I– World War II) A trench mortar such as the Stokes mortar.

Derived terms

• stovepipe trousers
• stovepipe hat
• stovepipe tornado

Translations

sheet-metal chimney

• Bulgarian: кюнец m (kjunec)
• Ojibwe: okijaabik
• Swedish: kaminrör n, plåtskorsten c, skorstenspipa c

channel for compartmentalized information

• Swedish: stuprör (sv) n, silo (sv) c

Verb

stovepipe (third-person singular simple present stovepipes, present participle stovepiping, simple past and past participle stovepiped)

1. (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.
2. (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.