Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An edible product, such as a cucumber, that has been preserved and flavored in a solution of brine or vinegar.
- n. A solution of brine or vinegar, often spiced, for preserving and flavoring food.
- n. A chemical solution, such as an acid, that is used as a bath to remove scale and oxides from the surface of metals before plating or finishing.
- n. Informal A disagreeable or troublesome situation; a plight. See Synonyms at predicament.
- n. Baseball A rundown.
- v. To preserve or flavor (food) in a solution of brine or vinegar.
- v. To treat (metal) in a chemical bath.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To pick.
- To glean.
- To eat sparingly or squeamishly; pick.
- To commit small thefts; pilfer.
- n. A grain of corn; any minute particle; a small quantity; a few.
- n. A hay-fork.
- n. A solution of salt and water in which flesh, fish, or other substance is preserved; brine.
- n. Vinegar, sometimes impregnated with spices, in which vegetables, fish, oysters, etc., are preserved.
- n. A thing preserved in pickle (in either of the above senses); specifically, a pickled cucumber.
- n. In founding, a bath of dilute sulphuric acid, or, for brass, of dilute nitric acid, to remove the sand and impurities from the surface.
- n. A state or condition of difficulty or disorder; a disagreeable position; a plight.
- n. A troublesome child.
- To preserve in pickle or brine; treat with pickle; also, to preserve or put up with vinegar, etc.: as, to pickle herring; to pickle onions.
- To imbue highly with anything bad: as, a pickled rogue.
- To prepare, as an imitation, and sell as genuine; give an antique appearance to: said of copies or imitations of paintings by the old masters.
- To subject, as various hardware articles, to the action of certain chemical agents in the process of manufacture.
- To treat with brine or pickle, as nets, to keep them from rotting.
- n. A small piece of land inclosed with a hedge; an inclosure; a close.
- n. A solution of salt and sulphuric acid in which skins are packed to preserve them. Sometimes other ingredients are used.
Wiktionary
- n. Scotland A kernel, grain
- n. Scotland A bit, small quantity
- n. A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
- n. , any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
- n. The brine used for preserving food.
- n. A difficult situation, peril.
- n. An affectionate term for a mildly mischievous loved one
- n. baseball A rundown.
- n. A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
- n. slang A penis.
- v. To preserve food in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.
- v. To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.
- v. programming (in the Python programming language) To serialize.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. See picle.
- n. A solution of salt and water, in which fish, meat, etc., may be preserved or corned; brine.
- n. Vinegar, plain or spiced, used for preserving vegetables, fish, eggs, oysters, etc.
- n. Any article of food which has been preserved in brine or in vinegar.
- n. (Founding) 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 color.
- n. colloq. A troublesome child.
- v. To preserve or season in pickle; to treat with some kind of pickle.
- v. To give an antique appearance to; -- said of copies or imitations of paintings by the old masters.
WordNet 3.0
- v. preserve in a pickling liquid
- n. informal terms for a difficult situation
- n. vegetables (especially cucumbers) preserved in brine or vinegar
Etymologies
- From Middle English pikel, pykyl, pekille, pigell ("spicy sauce served with meat or fish"), from Middle Dutch pekel ("brine"). Cognate with Scots pikkill ("salt liquor, brine"), Eastern Frisian pekel, päkel ("pickle, brine"), Dutch pekel ("pickle, brine"), Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel ("pickle, brine"), German Pökel ("pickle, brine"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pikle, highly seasoned sauce, probably from Middle Dutch pekel, pickle, brine. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Trying to "ketchup" with consumer demand for healthier foods, H.J. Heinz dropped the gherkin pickle from the condiment's more-than-a-century-old label logo and spruced it up with a tomato on the vine with the slogan "Grown not made.”
“How the script emerges from this pickle is a place of extreme spoiler territory and delicious screen surprise.”
“I heard the "this pickle is as cream filled as the pickle that got me into this pickle" line, then saw a pee joke in the other video. 3 guesses which one I voted for. nofiFilms soul quest looks lame. does adult swim really need another aqua teen? will yes!”
TV News: Vote For Totally 4 Teens to Become a New Adult Swim Show (A /Film Fave!) | /Film
“UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: First you'll select the master arm switch, like you said, and then you'll press what we call the pickle button, right here.”
“Th' Rambler fr'm Clare 'beautifully on what they call a pickle-e-o befure they sarved a rayplivin writ on him.”
“Peanut butter and pickle is better than it sounds, though.”
“She calls his name, and her voice is small and tinny, like that of the fairies he catches in pickle jars and beg to be set free.”
“Among comments there: The pickle is quintessentially 'Heinz' and is emblematic of your history.”
“Why once at a byker rally I had Cindy rub herself with burgers while the bykers licked her, I was really excited by all the greasy, burgers, but the onions and dill pickle is what really got me going …. ooops, speaking of going, I just went …. diaper change isle Johnny.”
“A hard corn taco of ground beef and pickle from a place called Malo Cantina Suavecita ... just awesome.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pickle’.
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Imprecise Units of Measurement
A list of terms for units of measurement that are less than exact, such as dessert-spoonful.
two shakes, dessert-spoonful, a pinch, a bit, some, smidge, smidgin, dollop, drop, fleck, smack, sprinkling and 187 more...
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Baseball Terms
Slang and plain words used to describe the great game of baseball.
groundout, single, caught looking, run it out, day game, getaway day, doubleheader, whiff, Texas Leaguer, wheelhouse, swipe a bag, utility player and 89 more...
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Pickle and such
Words that end like pickle. Listed here because they're funny (because they end like pickle).
pickle, sparkle, yokel, tinkle, fickle, prickle, trickle, circle, snorkel, ensnorkel, chuckle, buckle and 137 more...
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food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
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Situation Normal
inspired by Mistakes Were Made. Words for things going wrong in a manner particularly violent, stupid, soul-crushing, boggling, grandiose, or any combination of these qualities.
writeoff, wreck, bust, washout, turkey, untergang, undoing, total loss, flop, muck up, louse-up, goof-up and 156 more...
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wordlist
collabulary, concretize, cuspy, fecund, glory hole, kung fu, miasma, ninjitsu, panacea, rubric, snarky, synesthesia and 13 more...
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fix
set, anchor, mend, rivet, moor, clinch, emend, circumfix, fixated, cefixime, fixed cost, confix and 87 more...
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A _____ walks into a bar...
horse, bear, termite, grasshopper, panda, cowboy, guy with a chunk ..., duck, talking dog, guy with a toad o..., guy, blind man and 74 more...
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bianca's list of humourous words
hullabaloo, pickle, albuquerque, winkle, plump, cumquat, succotash, guacamole, bulbous, bouffant, jub-jub, poquaque and 11 more...
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Affectionate names you call your kids
peanut, pickle, jelly bean, babby, babs, cutie-head, sweetlie, treasure, cutie, monkey, noodles, monkey-noodles and 21 more...
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Ick!
Inspired by madmouth's Ugh! list.
brick, quick, airsick, lick, rollick, click, crick, kick, candlestick, cowlick, Toothpick, ickle and 17 more...
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Funny Words
gerbil, spleen, regurgitate, crevis, retro, orangutan, jiggly, ear, tart, pickle, fizzle, kapow and 4 more...
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Quandary
mare's nest, conundrum, riddle, pickle, stumper, imbroglio, quandary, quagmire, dilemma, puzzle, enigma, arcanum and 4 more...
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Fun Words
Words that are fun to say....
gobbledygook, jings, crivens, hullabaloo, wheech, brouhaha, pizzazz, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, pussyfoot, frippery, pitter-patter and 333 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pickle.

bilby "Reape barlie with sickle, that lies in ill pickle."
- Thomas Tusser, 'Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie', 1573. Oct 30, 2009
Pal In British English, pickle (uncountable) often refers to a sweet brown chutney, as in "a cheese and pickle sandwich". In the plural, as in "a jar of pickles", it refers to any kind of vegetables preserved in a vinegar solution, e.g. "mixed pickles", which include small onions and cauliflower florets. (American pickles are called "pickled gherkins".) Aug 9, 2009
chained_bear Have you heard the phrase "in a pickle"? ... or do you mean the definition is too strong for "in a pickle"? Apr 28, 2009
rolig Weirdnet Definition No. 4 is a bit overstated, I think. How do they come up with these things? Apr 28, 2009
marky Could also mean a conundrum. Apr 28, 2009
yarb Citation (in the sense of a difficult situation) on ignoramus. Jul 28, 2008
john In baseball, "A rundown, or when a runner is caught between two fielders who are throwing the ball back and forth to each other in an attempt to tag the runner out." Jul 11, 2008
asativum Then there's Arlo Guthrie's Motorcycle Song. I'm not sure what it's about, but it does establish that pickle and motorcycle can rhyme. Sort of. Apr 8, 2008
pterodactyl A pickle walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey, you're a pickle! What are you doing here?"
The pickle says, "Well for starters, I'm celebrating the fact that I can walk." Apr 7, 2008
reesetee Thanks, c_b. That has to be my all-time favorite use of pickle. :-) Feb 18, 2007
chained_bear Rocky Rococo: "Are you threatening me?! Why, you stupid toad! I ought to beat your brain out!"
Nancy: "No! Put down that pickle!"
--Firesign Theatre Feb 18, 2007