pickle

Meanings

Noun

• A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
• Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
• A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
• The brine used for preserving food.
• A difficult situation; peril.
• A mildly mischievous loved one.
• A rundown.
• A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
• A penis.
• A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.
• A bath of dilute sulphuric or nitric acid, etc., to remove burnt sand, scale, rust, etc., from the surface of castings, or other articles of metal, or to brighten them or improve their colour.
• In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.
• A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
• A small or indefinite quantity or amount (of something); a little, a bit, a few. Usually in partitive construction, frequently without "of"; a single grain or kernel of wheat, barley, oats, sand or dust.

Verb

• To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.
• To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.
• To serialize.
• To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.
• To eat sparingly.
• To pilfer.

Origin

• From Middle English pikel, pykyl, pekille, pigell, borrowed from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German pekel. Cognate with Scots pikkill, Saterland Frisian Piekele, Dutch pekel, Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel, German Pökel.
• Perhaps from Scottish pickle, apparently from pick + -le. Compare Scots pickil.