pie

Meanings

Noun

• A type of pastry that consists of an outer crust and a filling.
• Any of various other, non-pastry dishes that maintain the general concept of a shell with a filling.
• A pizza.
• The whole of a wealth or resource, to be divided in parts.
• A disorderly mess of spilt type.
• An especially badly bowled ball.
• A pie chart.
• The vulva.
• Magpie.
• The smallest unit of currency in South Asia, equivalent to of a rupee or of an anna.

Verb

• To hit in the face with a pie, either for comic effect or as a means of protest (see also pieing).
• To go around (a corner) in a guarded manner.
• (of printing types) To reduce to confusion; to jumble.

Origin

• From Middle English pye, pie, probably from Latin pīca ("magpie, jay") (from the idea of the many ingredients put into pies likened to the tendency of magpies to bring a variety of objects back to their nests), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- ("woodpecker; magpie").
• From Middle English pye, from Old French pie, from Latin pīca, feminine of pīcus, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peyk- ("woodpecker; magpie"). Cognate with speight.
• Borrowed from Hindi पाई ("quarter"), from Sanskrit पादिका.