Pip has several meanings:

1. A small seed in fruits like apples, oranges, or grapes. When you bite into an apple and find those tiny brown seeds in the core, those are pips. Some people spit out the pips when eating grapes, while others just swallow them.
2. A small dot or mark, especially on dice, dominoes, or playing cards. When you roll a die and see three dots, those are three pips. A domino tile showing five pips on one side and two on the other represents the numbers 5 and 2. The Ace of Spades has just one large spade symbol, but the Five of Hearts has five heart pips.
3. In some English-speaking countries, a short, high-pitched beep used as a time signal on radio or television. British radio broadcasts sometimes use pips to mark the exact hour: six pips in a row, with the last one landing precisely at the top of the hour. This helps people synchronize their clocks.

The word also appears in phrases like “being pipped at the post,” which means being barely beaten in a competition right at the very end.