lip ring, lip plug, and lip plate

lip ring, lip plug, and lip plate, objects, usually ring-shaped, inserted into the lips to alter their shape, used as decoration by certain primitive peoples. The lip plug is also known as a labret.

In South America at the time of the Spanish conquests, lip plugs, usually made of stone, gold, or rock crystal, were worn by the indigenous peoples. In several parts of Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and the upper reaches of the Nile, and in South America among the Botocudo, enormous plates and plugs are inserted into holes cut in the upper and lower lips. The lip studs and pins of the Nilotic peoples of Uganda, Kenya, and South Sudan—usually small and made of ivory, rock crystal, or stone—are inserted through the upper or lower lip or both. Sometimes lip rings are finely worked; those of the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, for example, are made of wood delicately inlaid with abalone shell.