Pike

How to spell pike

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pike

What does pike mean?

1. nounA long, predatory freshwater fish with a pointed snout and sharp teeth.
2. nounA long wooden shaft tipped with a sharp metal head, once used by foot soldiers.
3. nounA body position in diving or gymnastics with the legs straight and the body bent forward at the hips.

Pike in a sentence

• The angler landed a large pike from the reed-fringed lake.

• Each soldier lowered his pike to repel the cavalry charge.

• She entered the water cleanly after holding a tight pike.

• A pike will ambush smaller fish from among the weeds.

• The museum displayed a sixteenth-century pike beside a suit of armour.

• The judges praised his pike for its straight legs and sharp fold.

Where does pike come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Pike traces back to the idea of something sharp or pointed. The Old English word 'pic' meant a pointed tool or spike, and it is closely related to the verb 'to peck' and to the words 'peak' and 'beak', all carrying the sense of a sharp point. The freshwater fish took the name because of its long, pointed, predatory jaw, recorded from around the 1300s. The military weapon, a long shaft tipped with a sharp metal head, came partly through the French 'pique' (from 'piquer', to prick or pierce) and reinforced the same pointed meaning. The same family later gave us the 'turnpike', originally a spiked barrier swung across a road to stop travellers until a toll was paid, which is why a toll road is still called a pike in parts of North America. The short, blunt spelling hides a long history, but remembering that everything pike means is fundamentally pointed keeps the four letters easy to hold onto.

How the word is built

• pike (single Germanic root meaning point or pointed thing; not built from separable prefix or suffix)