Why do they call a fipple a fipple? I know what a fipple is, but am curious as to the origin of the word. Did someone just make it up, like the term "widget?

I'm glad you asked that question, Cryss. It enabled me to look clever (or incredibly boring) by pasting in this information:

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Fipple \Fip"ple\ (f[~e]r), n. [perh. fr. L. fibula a clasp, a
pin; cf. Prov. E. fible a stick used to stir pottage.]
A stopper, as in a wind instrument of music. [Obs.] --Bacon.
Professor Stanley V. McDaniel comments:
Both the Century Dictionary (1898), a rich mine of etymology, and the Oxford English dictionary state that the origin is obscure, but the Oxford asserts that fipple is probably related to Icelandic _flipi_ "the lip of a horse." The word fipple in Engl. dialect refers to "the under lip" and "to fipple" means to look dejected by protruding the under lip. The use of the term for the recorder's block seems to come from an analogy with the flute, where the under lip provides the same narrowing of the windway as the block does in the recorder, i.e. it is the underside of the wind passage. The Century Dictionary provides a quote stating this very idea. So I think it's unlikely that the word derived from "fibula."

To go a bit further, note the possible relation between the word "lip" and "flipi." "lip" is related to Middle Swedish lippa and similar forms lippe, lyppe, etc. from a presumed Old Teutonic root lep-. Frequently in word migration a reversal of consonants can occur, and also duplication. It's possible that from "lippe" came a form "plippe" softened to "flipi" as in the Icelandic.

What is interesting about the possible relation between fipple and lip is that "lip" variants often refer only to the lower lip, but also by extension they refer in general to the rim of an opening. Thus the fipple, or lip, of a recorder may be thought of as the rim of the windway, which is produced in its lower part by the block, and which takes the place of the lips themselves as the windway for a transverse flute.

Dan Chernick adds:

I just can't resist an OED request! According to my "Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary" (I'm paraphrasing it):

Fipple [Compare to Icelandic(?) "flipi" - lip of a horse]
1. The plug at the mouth of a wind-instrument, by which its volume was contracted.
First occurrance in English print: was in 1626 by Bacon in "Sylva": "Let there be a Recorder made with two Fipples, at each end one."
2. (In the northern dialect) The underlip in men and animals, when it hangs down large and loose. The expression "to hang a Fipple" means "to look disappointed, discontented, sulky; also, to weep".

A second entry for Fipple says it means "to whimper, whine; to slaver, dribble" from the Sweedish "flipa", "to weep with distortion of the mouth"

Thanks Geoffrey!

I actually find this interesting!

My wife, who spoke 4 languages after graduating high school in Poland, is always asking me about these odds and ends in our English language because of the familiar roots that come from either Latin (one of her languages) or some derivatives of the Slavic or European languages, etc. When she asked me about why I called it a fipple I truly didn't have an answer, other than what it was - in contrast to why it was called that.

Now I have something to torture my office mates with tomorrow - the "Cryss' Word of the Day" is a tradition at our office, and I can really push the "whimper and whine" part of the definition to the folks over in Tech Support .