From Middle English kipe, kype, from Old English cȳpe, cȳpa (“basket”), from Proto-Germanic *kipǭ, *kippǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *gey- (“to bend, twist”).
Akin to Middle Low German kīpe ("basket"; > German Low German Kiep, Kiepke (“basket”), German Kiepe (“carrying basket”)), Norwegian kaup (“wooden box; crate”).
Meanings
An osier basket used for catching fish.
The completed kipe looks like a crinoline made for a giantess; from the slender waist the skirts swell to a diameter of eight feet at the hem.
The kipe is only the mouth to the fisherman's elaborate trap and is fixed so that it faces up-river. 1947, Brian Waters, Severn Tide, J. M. Dent, page 149:
Johnny imagines all manner of chrome gadgetry that he could kipe and give to his father to jazz up his ’fifty-six Ford Vicky ragtop. 1987 [1984], James Ellroy, chapter 22, in Because the Night, New York: Avon, →ISBN, page 189: