Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various mammals of the family Suidae, having short legs, hooves with two weight-bearing toes, bristly hair, and a cartilaginous snout used for digging, including the domesticated hog (Sus scrofa subsp. domestica syn. S. domesticus) and wild species such as the bushpig.
  • noun A domesticated hog, especially when weighing less than 54 kilograms (120 pounds).
  • noun The edible parts of one of these mammals.
  • noun Informal A person regarded as being piglike, greedy, or disgusting.
  • noun Derogatory Slang A police officer.
  • noun Slang A member of the social or political establishment, especially one holding sexist or racist views.
  • noun A crude block of metal, chiefly iron or lead, poured from a smelting furnace.
  • noun A mold in which such metal is cast.
  • noun Pig iron.
  • intransitive verb To give birth to pigs; farrow.
  • idiom (in a pig's eye) Under no condition; never.
  • idiom (pig in a poke) Something that is offered in a manner that conceals its true nature or value.
  • idiom (pig it) To live in a piglike fashion.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pig-iron collectively or any specified amount of iron pigs.
  • noun In forestry, see rigging-sled.
  • To bring forth pigs; bring forth in the manner of pigs; litter.
  • To act as pigs; live like a pig; live or huddle as pigs: sometimes with an indefinite it.
  • noun A hog; a swine; especially, a porker, or young swine of either sex, the old male being called boar, the old female sow.
  • noun The flesh of swine; pork.
  • noun An oblong mass of metal that has been run while still molten into a mold excavated in sand; specifically, iron from the blast-furnace run into molds excavated in sand.
  • noun A customary unit of weight for lead, 301 pounds.
  • noun A very short space of time.
  • noun An earthen vessel; any article of earthenware.
  • noun A can for a chimney-top.
  • noun A potsherd.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A piggin.
  • verb To bring forth (pigs); to bring forth in the manner of pigs; to farrow.
  • verb To huddle or lie together like pigs, in one bed.
  • noun The young of swine, male or female; also, any swine; a hog.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any wild species of the genus Sus and related genera.
  • noun An oblong mass of cast iron, lead, or other metal. See Mine pig, under Mine.
  • noun Low One who is hoggish; a greedy person.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See under Masked.
  • noun (Founding) the bed of sand in which the iron from a smelting furnace is cast into pigs.
  • noun cast iron in pigs, or oblong blocks or bars, as it comes from the smelting furnace. See Pig, 4.
  • noun (Naut.) a nickname for a quadrant or sextant.
  • noun [Colloq.] a blind bargain; something bought or bargained for, without the quality or the value being known.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of several mammals of the genus Sus, having cloven hooves, bristles and a nose adapted for digging; especially the domesticated farm animal Sus scrofa.
  • noun specifically A young swine, a piglet.
  • noun uncountable The edible meat of such an animal; pork.
  • noun Someone who overeats or eats rapidly and noisily.
  • noun A nasty or disgusting person.
  • noun A dirty or slovenly person.
  • noun informal A difficult problem.
  • noun countable and uncountable A block of cast metal.
  • noun The mold in which a block of metal is cast.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pigge, young pig, probably from Old English *picga.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English pigge ("pig, pigling") (originally a term for a young pig, with adult pigs being swine), apparently from Old English *picga (attested only in compounds, such as picgbrēad ("mast, pig-fodder")). Connection to early Dutch bigge (modern Dutch big ("piglet")), West Frisian bigge ("pigling"), and similar terms in Middle Low German is sometimes proposed, "but the phonology is difficult" and other sources say the words are "almost certainly not" related.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortening of pigeon

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin unknown.

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Examples

Comments

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  • 2.18.07: The year of the (golden) pig. Happy Lunar New Year everyone.

    February 18, 2007

  • "You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in The last side. The pigs, now used to the set up, start to come through the gate to eat and you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

    Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are used to it, they had forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves and soon accept their captivity."

    Hmmmm. Is there a lesson here? Seems a lot like how you cook live frogs, starting with luke warm water then gradually raising the temperature.

    September 10, 2007

  • Sounds like the encroachment of liberty in America, lest I make a controversial statement... *dramatic music*

    September 10, 2007

  • Also a mild curse, as used by Yockenthwaite in the Rottentrolls.

    December 30, 2008

  • A device with blades or brushes inserted in a pipeline for cleaning purposes. The pressure of the oil stream behind pushes the pig along the pipeline to clean out rust, wax, scale and debris. These devices are also called scrapers.

    June 28, 2015

  • "(The beauty of the pig, so to speak, and the main reason behind its importance to the medieval diet, was that unlike sheep or cows it could be left to fend for itself, foraging on chestnuts and waste, whether in town or country; but even for pigs there was not enough food to go around through the lean months.)"

    --Jack Turner, _Spice: The History of a Temptation_ (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 109

    Additional text, in which this parenthetical is placed, can be found in a comment on November.

    December 2, 2016