Pickle

How to spell pickle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pickle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pickle mean?

1. nounA vegetable, especially a cucumber, preserved in brine or vinegar.
2. nounAn awkward or difficult predicament.
3. verbTo preserve food in brine or vinegar.

Pickle in a sentence

• noun

  She added a crunchy pickle to the side of her sandwich.

• noun

  Missing the last train left her in a real pickle.

• verb

  Every autumn they pickle the surplus onions from the garden.

• noun

  The jar of pickle had been sitting in the fridge for months.

• noun

  Forgetting his passport put him in quite a pickle at the airport.

• verb

  You can pickle beetroot to keep it through the winter.

Where does pickle come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Pickle entered English in the late 1300s from a Low German or Middle Dutch source, pekel, which named the salty brine or spiced vinegar used to preserve food. The word originally referred to the liquid itself rather than the food sitting in it, and only later did English speakers shift the sense to the preserved vegetable, especially the cucumber, soaked in that solution. The figurative meaning, being in a difficult or awkward situation, grew naturally from the image of being stuck in a sour, briny mess; it was already in use by Shakespeare's time. The everyday spelling is regular and phonetic, so the only minor trap is the soft -ckle ending, where the silent doubling of the consonant sound is spelled ck rather than just k. Related preserving words in Dutch and German still carry the same pekel root, a reminder that the term came to English kitchens through trade across the North Sea.

How the word is built

• pickle (single root from Middle Dutch pekel: brine, pickling liquid)