pickle

plural pickles · alternative obsolete rare pickel

1. AustraliaCanadaUScountableuncountableA cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.

   A pickle goes well with a hamburger.

2. countablein pluraloftenuncountableAny vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
3. UKcountableuncountableA sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
4. countableuncountableThe brine used for preserving food.

   This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.

5. countableinformaluncountableA difficult situation; peril.

   The climber found himself in a pickle when one of the rocks broke off.

   2 more examples

   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, →ISBN, page 194

   Ah, yes, the moral quandary, a state of uncertainty, requiring a choice between equally unfavorable options. But if that's too confusing for your soft, millennial brains, let's call it a pickle.

   2019, Bob Smiley, Nicole Betz, “Shrinkage” (2:18 from the start), in Atypical, season 3, episode 7, spoken by Professor Judd (Sara Gilbert), via Netflix

   Synonyms: ass in a sling, bind, bucket of syrup, calvary, cauldron, cross, cross to bear, difficulty

6. countableendearinguncountableA mildly mischievous loved one.

   '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

   2 more examples

   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

7. countableuncountableball gamesA rundown.

   Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.

8. uncountableA children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown

   The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.

9. countableslanguncountableA penis.

   Synonyms: anaconda, baloney pony, bald-headed hermit, banana, bird, birdie, bobby, boonga

10. countableslanguncountableA pipe for smoking methamphetamine.

    Load some shards in that pickle.

11. countableuncountableartsA 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. countableuncountableIn an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.

present singular third person pickles · participle present pickling · participle past pickled · past pickled · alternative obsolete rare pickel

1. ergativetransitiveTo preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.

   These cucumbers pickle very well.

   1 more example

   We pickled the remainder of the crop.

   Synonyms: pickle up, souse

2. transitiveTo remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.

   The crew will pickle the fittings in the morning.

3. computingTo serialize.

   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

   1 more example

   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. historicalTo pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.

   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, →ISBN, page 70

   1 more example

   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

plural pickles

1. Northern EnglandScotlandA kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
2. Northern EnglandScotlandA 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.

   […] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […]

   1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thrawn Janet

   1 more example

   I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them.

   1897, Stanley John Weyman, chapter XXVI, in Shrewsbury

present singular third person pickles · participle present pickling · participle past pickled · past pickled

1. Northern EnglandScotlandambitransitiveTo eat sparingly.
2. Northern EnglandScotlandambitransitiveTo pilfer.

plural Pickles

1. A surname.