pig

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A farm animal with a fat body, short legs, and a flat nose, kept for its meat.

   The farmer kept three pigs in a pen behind the barn.

2. 2
   noun

   The meat from a pig; pork.

   Some religions do not allow people to eat pig.

3. 3
   noun

   Someone who eats too much, too fast, or in a messy way.

   You greedy pig, you've eaten all the cake!

4. 4
   noun

   A rude or unpleasant person who behaves in a dirty or selfish way.

   He is a real pig who never cleans up after himself.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Pig is recorded once in Old English, though swine was then the usual term. In the Middle Ages it initially meant specifically a young pig, a sense still used in North America.

From Middle English pigge (“pig, piglet”) (originally a term for a young pig, with adult pigs being swyn (“swine”)), from Old English *picga, *pycga (attested in picgbrēad (“mast, pig-fodder”)), perhaps a diminutive of Proto-West Germanic *puk, *pūk (“pig”), which also gave rise to Middle Low German pûke, puyke (“pig, piglet”). Pokorny suggests this root might be somehow related to *bū-, *bew- (“to blow; swell”), which could account for the alternation between "pig" and "big". Compare Middle Dutch pogge, puggen, pigge, pegsken (> dialectal Dutch pogge (“piglet”)), Middle Low German pugge (> We…

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary