pickle

Etymology 1

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”).

noun

1. A cucumber preserved in a solution, usually a brine or a vinegar syrup.
   A pickle goes well with a hamburger.
2. (often in the plural) Any vegetable preserved in vinegar and consumed as relish.
3. A sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain.
4. The brine used for preserving food.
   This tub is filled with the pickle that we will put the small cucumbers into.
5. (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, page 194
6. (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
   '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.
   Jones was caught in a pickle between second and third.
8. (uncountable) A children’s game with three participants that emulates a baseball rundown
   The boys played pickle in the front yard for an hour.
9. (slang) A penis.
10. (slang) A pipe for smoking methamphetamine.
    Load some shards in that pickle.
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

1. (transitive, ergative) 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.
2. (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.
3. (programming, in Python) 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
4. (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, page 70

Etymology 2

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

noun

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.
   […] ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time […] 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thrawn Janet

verb

1. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To eat sparingly.
2. (Northern England, Scotland, transitive, intransitive) To pilfer.