Definition of "pickle"

pickle¹

/ˈpɪkl̩/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural pickles
1. (chiefly US, Canada, Australia) A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
2. (often in the plural) Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
3. (UK) A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
4. The brine used for preserving food.
5. (informal) A difficult situation; peril.
  Quotations
  I beg you, Miss Jones, to realize the pickle you're in.
  1955 October, Rex Stout, “Die Like a Dog”, in Three Witnesses, Bantam, published 1994, page 194
6. (endearing) A mildly mischievous loved one.
  Quotations
  by degrees my little pickle (who, as I told you at the beginning of the story, was the most troublesome child I ever came across) turned into a very well-behaved young gentleman.
  1867, Polly Stubbs, Nursery times; or, Stories about the little ones, by an old nurse, page 143
  ... If you could get my little pickle to learn his multiplication table before you leave us, you shall have that musical box to take home with you.
  1885, Eleanor A. Bulley, Great Britain for little Britons, page 116
  'And now,' she said, 'what about that kiss my little pickle was going to give his old Auntie?'
  1965, Eric Malpass, Morning's at seven, page 43
7. (baseball) A rundown.
8. (uncountable) A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
9. (slang) A penis.
10. (slang) A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.
11. (metalworking) 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.
12. In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.
verb
third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled
1. (transitive, ergative) To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.
2. (transitive) To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.
3. (programming, in Python) To serialize.
  Quotations
  You can now restore the pickled data. If you like, close your Python interpreter and open a new instance, to convince yourself […]
  2005, Peter Norton, et al: Beginning Python
  To illustrate how this would work in practice, consider a field designed to store and retrieve a pickled copy of any arbitrary Python object.
  2008, Marty Alchin, Pro Django
4. (historical) To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.
  Quotations
  On Wednesday 26 May, […] I had [an enslaved man] flogged and pickled and then made Hector shit in his mouth. […] In July, […] Gave [another enslaved man] a moderate whipping, pickled him well, made Hector shit in his mouth, […]
  1756, Thomas Thistlewood, diary, quoted in 2001, Glyne A. Griffith, Caribbean Cultural Identities, Bucknell University Press , page 38
  Naval seamen could also be keel-hauled, ducked, pickled, and flogged around the fleet.[elsewhere, page 93, the book explains:] A pickled man had his flogged back washed with vinegar.
  2016, Christopher P. Magra, Poseidon's Curse: British Naval Impressment and Atlantic Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge University Press, page 70

pickle²

/ˈpɪkl̩/

noun
plural pickles
1. (Northern England, Scotland) A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
2. (Northern England, Scotland) 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.
  Quotations
  […] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […]
  1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thrawn Janet
verb
third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled
1. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To eat sparingly.
2. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To pilfer.

Definition of "pickle"

pickle1

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verb

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pickle2

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pickle¹

pickle²