Meaning of pip to the post | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To overcome a strong competitor in a sporting event, especially by gaining a small advantage at the last decisive moment.
   idiomatic
2. To overcome a prominent competitor, gaining their position, especially by making a smart, sudden move.
   idiomatic

Examples

“"Pipped to the post: What happens to famous athletes who just miss a place on the podium?" (end of the title) A place on the podium can be missed by tiny fractions – and finish a career. Simon Usborne talks to some famous Olympian losers about the moment their dream ended.”

“What may bar EastEnders from acceptance in the U.S. is not immorality but unintelligibility. PBS may even distribute a glossary of Cockney phrases so that Americans will know what a character means when he or she is "over the moon," "skint," "pipped to the post," or "in the club" (happy, broke, defeated, or pregnant).”

“Both were pipped to the post in 1888 by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, a student of Hermann von Helmholtz (himself one of the towering figures of nineteenth-century German physics) who announced to the world that he had found a way of propagating and detecting these long-sought-for electromagnetic waves.”

CEFR level