pickle

/ˈpɪkəl/

pickle noun: a cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.

Noun (1)

pickle (countable and uncountable, plural pickles)

(Australia, Canada, US) A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
- A pickle goes well with a hamburger.
(in plural, often) Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
(UK) A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
The brine used for preserving food.
- This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.
(informal) A difficult situation; peril.
- The climber found himself in a pickle when one of the rocks broke off.
- 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
Synonyms:

ass in a sling, bind, bucket of syrup, calvary, cauldron, cross, cross to bear, difficulty, dilemma, dire straits
(endearing) A mildly mischievous loved one.
- 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
A rundown.
- Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.
(uncountable) A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
- The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.
(slang) A penis.

Synonyms:

anaconda, baloney pony, bald-headed hermit, banana, bird, birdie, bobby, boonga, cack, choad
(slang) A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.
- Load some shards in that pickle.
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.
In an optical landing system, the hand-held controller connected to the lens, or apparatus on which the lights are mounted.

Verb (1)

pickle (third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled)

(ergative, transitive) To preserve food (or sometimes other things) in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution.
- We pickled the remainder of the crop.
- These cucumbers pickle very well.
Synonyms:

pickle up, souse
(transitive) To remove high-temperature scale and oxidation from metal with heated (often sulphuric) industrial acid.
- The crew will pickle the fittings in the morning.
To 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
- 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
(historical) To pour brine over a person after flogging them, as a method of punishment.
- 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, →ISBN, page 70

Noun (2)

pickle (plural pickles)

(Northern England, Scotland) A kernel; a grain (of salt, sugar, etc.)
(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.
- […] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […]1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thrawn Janet
- 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

Verb (2)

pickle (third-person singular simple present pickles, present participle pickling, simple past and past participle pickled)

(Northern England, Scotland, ambitransitive) To eat sparingly.
(Northern England, Scotland, ambitransitive) To pilfer.

Proper noun capitalized: Pickle

Pickle (plural Pickles)

A surname.

pickle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

pickle in Hindi

any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish: अचार acār
to preserve food in a salt, sugar or vinegar solution: अचार बनाना acār banānā

pickle in Tamil

any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish: ஊறுகாய் ūṟukāy

pickle in Marathi

any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish: लोणचे loṇce

pickle in Urdu

any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish: اچار acār

More languagesFewer languages

pickle in Bengali: আচার acar
pickle in Telugu: పచ్చడి paccaḍi
pickle in Malayalam: അച്ചാർ accāṟ, ചൊറുക്ക coṟukka
pickle in Kannada: ಉಪ್ಪಿನಕಾಯಿ uppinakāyi
pickle in Punjabi: اچار acār, ਅਚਾਰ acār
pickle in Gujarati: અથાણું
pickle in Odia: ଅଚାର
pickle in Assamese: আচাৰ asar
pickle in Nepali: अचार acār
pickle in Arabic: مُخَلَّل muḵallal
pickle in Malay: jeruk, acar
pickle in Persian: ترشی torši, آچار âčâr, خیارشور xiyâr-šur
pickle in Thai: ดอง dɔɔng
pickle in Vietnamese: dưa, đồ chua, dưa chua, dưa muối
pickle in Myanmar: ချဉ်ဖတ် hkyanyhpat, အချဉ်တည် a.hkyanytany, အချဉ်ဖောက် a.hkyanyhpauk, ချဉ်ဖတ်တည် hkyanyhpattany

Examples of pickle in a sentence

Salt, sugar, and acid all act as preservatives when making pickles.
Let's go hork pickles at people from the back row of the movie theatre.
There were three pickles in a jar.

All 40 example sentences with pickle

Synonyms of pickle

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of pickle

Forms of pickle

Noun
plural	pickles
alternative form (obsolete, rare)	pickel
Verb
third-person singular present	pickles
present participle	pickling
past participle	pickled
past	pickled
Proper noun
plural	Pickles

Past tense of pickle: pickled

Plural of pickle: pickles

Origin of pickle

From Middle English pikel (“spicy sauce served with meat or fish”), borrowed from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German pekel (“brine”). Cognate with Scots pikkill (“salt liquor, brine”), Saterland Frisian Piekele (“pickle, brine”), Dutch pekel (“pickle, brine”), Low German pekel, peckel, pickel, bickel (“pickle, brine”), German Pökel (“pickle, brine”), Icelandic pækill (“brine”).

Perhaps from Scottish pickle, apparently from pick + -le (diminutive suffix). Compare Scots pickil.

Phrases with pickle

Words that rhyme with pickle

7 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about pickle

What does pickle mean?: Pickle means a cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
What is pickle in Hindi?: Pickle in Hindi is अचार (acār), अचार बनाना (acār banānā). See Pickle meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is pickle?: Pickle can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce pickle?: Pickle is pronounced /ˈpɪkəl/.
What is the plural of pickle?: The plural of pickle is pickles.

Words near pickle in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: pickle (page history and authors); Pickle (page history and authors); আচার (Bengali) (page history and authors); അച്ചാർ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); اچار (Punjabi) (page history and authors); pickle (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); pickle (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); আচাৰ (Assamese) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pickle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pickle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pickle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.