pickle

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.

   A pickle goes well with a hamburger.

2. 2
   noun

   The brine used for preserving food.

   This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.

3. 3
   noun

   A difficult situation; peril.

   The climber found himself in a pickle when one of the rocks broke off.

4. 4
   noun

   A mildly mischievous loved one.

   by degrees my little pickle (who, as I told you at the beginning of the story, was the most troublesome child I ever came across) turned into a very well-behaved young gentleman.

5. 5
   noun

   A rundown.

   Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.

6. 6
   noun

   A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown

   The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.

7. 7
   noun

   A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.

   Load some shards in that pickle.

8. 8
   verb

   To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.

   We pickled the remainder of the crop.

Etymology

From Middle English pikel (“spicy sauce served with meat or fish”), borrowed from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German pekel (“brine”). Cognate with Scots pikkill (“salt liquor, brine”), Saterland Frisian Piekele (“pickle, brine”), Dutch pekel (“pickle, brine”), Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel (“pickle, brine”), German Pökel (“pickle, brine”), Icelandic pækill (“brine”).